Skip to main content

200 up for Richard Fourie as the Garth Puller-trained Parmenion (Crusade) wins the fourth race comfortably (Candiese Lenferna Photography)

Richard Fourie reached the 200 winner mark for the season on the Hollywoodbets Greyville poly on Wednesday and later had one more win to leave his number of wins for the season on 201.

Two of his wins were for Wendy Whitehead, who increased her lead in the KZN Trainers Championship.

Serino Moodley also rode a double at the meeting.

It could have been a rewarding meeting for Turf Talk newsletter readers.

In yesterday’s newsletter Wendy Whitehead mentioned two of her runners today as ones who could help her win the KZN Championship and both of them won. Fourie was aboard both of them.

The Wilgerbosdrift and Mauritzfontein-bred three-year-old Fire Away filly Mauritania got a good break from draw three i the first race over 1600m and she reached the front effortlessly.

Fourie set a reasonable gallop, but the filly relaxed well.In the straight he did not need to draw the crop as she responded well to his driving hands and she won by an easy 2,40 lengths, despite having been raised three points for her second place finish in her previous start. She has now won three races in eleven starts and being out of a Sadler’s Wells mare there could be plenty more in the tank.

Whitehead’s comment for her runner in the sixth race, Sundance Kid, in yesterday’s article was, “Sundance Kid is going for three-in-a-row on Wednesday. He has had a few problems and we’ve managed to sort it out and he is just going to get better and better as he gets going along now.”

Fourie also managed to get to the lead from a wide draw on this four-year-old Master Of My Fate gelding, who was also bred by Wilgerbosdrift and Mauritzfontein.

He slowed it down to a crawl and the gelding duly found plenty in the straight to go on and win by 2,20 lengths.

Sundance Kid won on debut as a juvenile and with the hattrick under the belt today he has now won four races in 14 starts.

Fourie’s strike rate for the season is now on 21.50%.

For the first time this season his projected number of wins for the season has gone above the record he is targeting.

He needs to get 335 wins to beat the 334 record of Anthony Delpech and earn himself a R1 million bonus from Hollywoodbets.

His projected number of wins after Wednesday’s meeting was 336, but it went down to 334 after he skipped the Jo’Burg meeting on Thursday.

This is based on his current rides-per-calendar-day rate for the season and his current strike rate for the season.

Whitehead increased her lead in the KZN Trainers Championship to three.

She is on 32 wins to Garth Puller and Gareth van Zyl’s 29, Mike Miller’s 27 and Alyson Wright’s 26.

Whitehead’s 32 wins have been achieved at a strike rate of 13.56%.

Moodley goes to 52 wins for the season at 14.44%.

His double today was on the Doug Campbell-trained Tom’s Act (Act Of War) and the Carl Hewitson-trained Chelsea Flower (Flower Alley).