See It Again flies up for a narrow third in the Gr 1 L’Ormarins King’s Plate (Picture: Wayne Marks)
Andrew Fortune is supremely confident of winning the Gr 1 wfa WSB Met on the Justin Snaith-trained See It Again.
Lauded by virtually all and sundry for his horsemanship, one thing surprisingly missing on his CV is a win in one of South Africa’s three “majors”, the Hollywoodbets Durban July, the WSB Met and the Betway Summer Cup.
It looked like he was going to break his majors drought in the Summer Cup this year when Olivia’s Way came with a storming run on the outside.
Unfortunately, she started running around a bit and that might have been costly as she only lost by half-a-length to another filly, Mocha Blend.
It is a thing of beauty to watch Fortune at his best and he seems to have taken his game to its highest plain in recent weeks.
He is particularly good at his home course, Hollywoodbets Kenilworth, and it would be a fairytale, or more accurately another chapter to a story which is already a fairytale, if he were able to finally pull of his hometown’s biggest race, the WSB Met, in his late fifties.
It would also be a fairytale story for See It Again’s owner Nick Jonsson, who would in that case have pulled off four successive wins in the Met with four different horses.
Justin Snaith is also going for a fourth successive Met win, and a fifth overall, and that would also be an amazing feat, but not quite as amazing as in Jonsson’s case simply due to the numerical odds involved – whilst trainers are able to pull off such feats on rare occasions, it would be unheard of for an owner to do it.
A quick look at this season’s logs show Snaith to have had 514 runs, whilst Jonsson has had 92 runs.
Furthermore, Snaith has six chances to complete the four-in-a-row sequence in the Met, while Jonsson has three chances to do it (with Eight On Eighteen, See It Again and Okavango), although if Eight On Eighteen were to win it he would have done the four-in-row with only three different horses.
See It Again has had a drama-filled season and the most apt saying to describe it would be the one about every cloud having a silver lining.
He was set to have a tilt at the R6 million Betway Summer Cup, which was at the beginning of the season the most expensive race in the country.
However, that plan went pear-shaped when he refused to load for both of his preparation races.
He was thus scratched from the Summer Cup.
That has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because unlike last year when he fulfilled the racing adage that you can’t travel up to Jo’Burg and then down to Cape Town and expect to be successful, he arrived in Cape Town this season fresher than ever before.
He also changed yards to Justin Snaith and that certainly wouldn’t be a reflection on Michael Roberts’ ability to get the best out of him, but it just makes sense for the yard who is hands on and able to see the horse in the flesh everyday to also be making the decisions.
See It Again’s starting stall woes were worked on by Cape Town’s renowned “horse whisperer” Malan Du Toit.
He did lose a a couple of lengths when fly-jumping in the Gr 2 Ridgemont Green Point Stakes over 1600m.
However, he showed his well-being by flying home for a 0,35 length third with Fortune in the irons for the first time.
Then in the L’Ormarins King’s Plate he jumped perfectly, so hopefully Malan du Toit has won that battle.
He produced the most eyecatching finish in the King’s Plate from near the back and had he not had to ease slightly to get past a slowing Dave The King he might well have won it instead of finishing a 0,25 length third.
Andrew said after the race, “Phenomenal run, I’m so happy. He was well behaved today and hopefully that’s his pattern. If he gets half-a-draw in the Met you can start backing.”
Unfortunately, he landed draw ten out of eleven, which will make it a little bit harder to find cover, although in a small field being at the back won’t be a train smash.
Fortune said in an interview on Wednesday, one day after the draw ceremony, “I probably ride him six out of seven mornings and I tell him all the time, ‘You’re the best horse in the country’ and he’s a bit like me he goes ‘haw, haw, haw … haw haw haw…’ But when I am on him I tell him that ten times a morning, ‘You are the best horse in the country’ and I am still a firm believer I’m going to win it. If the pace is on, then it will not be a race, I am telling you he will come from behind .. . I say that because a mile is just too short for him. I’ve got to know him and I’m supremely confident, I really am.”
There is some dramatic irony in his concluding statement, because See It Again is out of a mare called Supreme Vision.
Nobody who was at Hollywood bets Greyville on either of those occasions when See It Again did not load would have envisaged him being in the position he is now in. The WSB Met is there for the taking and then there is still the Hollywoodbets Durban July, for which the recently announced R10 million stake is almost double the Summer Cup’s stake.
That cloud had more than a silver lining.
A win for See It Again will see Drakenstein Stud having bred three out of the last four Met winners and a fourth met winner overall.
Drakenstein are also breeders of Eight On Eighteen and Sail The Seas.
