Imaginable (William Longsword) clinches a four-timer for the Zackey/Smith combination at Fairview on Friday. (Pauline Herman Photography).
Craig Zackey’s four-timer for Gavin Smith on the Fairview turf on Friday put him just four behind Richard Fourie and three behind Gavin Lerena in a national jockey’s championship race which is developing into a thrilling battle.
Lerena went one ahead of Fourie on Thursday when scoring a treble at Turffontein Inside, but Fourie levelled matters in today’s third race when scoring on Juan Nel’s Henry’s Hedge (Louis The King) and he reclaimed the lead when winning the next race on the Alan Greeff-trained Zinovi (Heavenly Blue).
Zackey had won the first on the Smith-trained odds-on shot Ready (Red Ray) and he then won the last three races for Smith on Family Power (Louis The King), Kingdundee (TheUnited States) and Imaginable (William Longsword).
Fourie is now on 238 wins at a strike rate of 25.11%, Lerena is on 237 at 24.97% and Zackey is on 234 at 17.58%.
Smith is on 110 wins at 12.22%.
All of his wins have been in the East Cape and he has no chance of catching arch rival Alan Greeff, who has had 156 wins countrywide at 17.77% and 153 of them have been in the East Cape.
Greeff is chasing his own record of 176 wins in an East Cape season, so he has six meetings let in which to score 24 wins. That is an average of four wins per meeting, a tall order, but not imposible for the prolific operation.
