Alan Greeff was the toast of this year’s Equus Awards and walked away with an Equus Special Achievement Award for his incredible season in which he had the three best two-year-old fillies in the land and between them they landed Graded events in all three of the major centres as well as at home in Gqeberha.
Two of them, the Canford Cliffs filly Direct Hit and the Master Of My Fate filly Golden Palm won Gr 1s in KZN.
It had been 17 years since an East Cape horse had won a Gr 1 race in KZN.
Greeff’s pair won the Allan Robertson Championship at Hollywoodbets Scottsville over 1200m and the Douglas Whyte Stakes over 1600m at Hollywoodbets Greyville respectively.
The below article recounts the day the East Cape were previously victorious at the highest level in KZN, on 31 May 2008 in Pietermaritzburg.
The article was written for the Sunday newspapers.
The R350 000 Alan Robertson Fillies Championship was the first of the four Grade I’s on the card at Scottsville yesterday and was shared by the Mike Azzie-trained On Her Toes and the Nic Claassen-trained Port Elizabeth raider Geepee S.
In a touching moment Azzie and Claassen clasped hands in a joint victory salute while holding their mounts shortly after the result was announced.
Claassen, celebrating his 82nd birthday, was very close to Azzie’s father and grandfather, Herbie and George respectively, who were colleagues of his on the training tracks many years ago.
Azzie recalled how he had once trained a horse called Forest King for “Oom Nic” but the latter took over the horse himself when deciding to come out of retirement and went on to win the Gilbey’s with him at this corresponding meeting in 1985.
The Corinne Bestel-trained She’s A Winner and the Charles Laird-trained Thin Red Line vied for favouritism, starting 28-10 and 3-1 respectively, but the horses drawn towards the inside seemed to travel easier throughout and the pair faded out coming up the hill in the final 400m.
In a ding-dong tussle with Geepee S, On Her Toes fought back at the line and jockey Weichong Marwing thought he had got up but the photo showed that Bernard Fayd’herbe on Geepee S had kept the latter going long enough to share.
Rock Concert finished third ahead of Zirconeum.
Claassen, asked on whether he thought his 25-1 shot had had a chance, replied: “I didn’t bring her here to see the bluegum trees!”, while Azzie said it had been wonderful to share a Grade I win with such a fine gentleman.
On Her Toes, who started at 11-2, is owned by Barry Irwin’s Team Valor in partnership with Vanashree and Anant Singh while Geepee S is owned by Brian Miskin and Albert Rapp in partnership with Claassen himself.
On Her Toes is by Western Winter and was bred by Highlands Farm Stud while Geepee S is by Goldkeeper and was bred by Daytona Stud.
