Andrew Fortune and his son Aldo Domeyer celebrate a history-making father-son exacta in the Gr 1 wfa WSB Met, about 45 minutes after clinching a father-son exacta in the Gr 1 Maine Chance Farms Majorca Stakes (Picture: Wayne Marks)
Andrew Fortune retired in 2017 having been a champion jockey, but he had never won any of the country’s three major races, the Hollywoodbets Durban July, the WSB Met or the Betway Summer Cup and a few years later his weight had ballooned to 90kg.
Yet today at the age of 58 he won the WSB Met on the favourite See It Again in one of the all time great sporting comebacks and in the process he clinched a fourth successive Met for both trainer Justin Snaith and owner Nick Jonsson.
Snaith equaled Mike Bass’s record of four Mets in a row, but what made the feat for him and Jonsson absolutely extraordinary was they did it with four different horses, Jet Dark, Double Superlative, Eight On Eighteen and See It Again.
Of those four only Double Superlative was not bred by Drakenstein Stud.
The fairytale doesn’t end there.
Fortune’s son Aldo Domeyer was on one of the biggest outsiders in the field, the Snaith-trained Legal Counsel, and he finished second.
If this was not the first ever father-son participation in the Met it was definitely the first ever father-son exacta.
And there is still more.
The only other Gr 1 on the day, the Maine Chance Farms Majorca Stakes, was also won by Snaith and Fortune with the favourite Double Grand Slam … and in second place was Aldo Domeyer on the Candice Bass-Robinson-trained Rainbow Lorikeet.
So there were two Gr 1 father-son exactas on the same day!
If a movie director included all of this he would be told to make it more realistic!
An incredible day for Fortune saw him riding four winners in all, three of them for Snaith.
Snaith had five winners on the day, including two Gr 1s and a Gr 3.
