Richard Fourie is chasing jockey great Anthony Delpech’s famous record of 334 wins in a season and the pair were pictured in a candid moment at Hollywoodbets Greyville on Tuesday after Hollywood recorded a first ever four-timer with Fourie scoring on three of them (Candiese Lenferna Photography)
Richard Fourie’s projected number of winners for the season if keeping up both his number of rides per calendar-day rate and strike rate for the season has increased dramatically to 330.
This means that in order to reach the magical figure of 335, which will break Anthony Delpech’s record and earn him a million rand bonus from Hollywoodbets, he will just need to increase his strike rate slightly.
If keeping up a his current rides per calendar-day rate of slightly over 4,2, he will need to ride to a strike rate of 22.22% to get the 143 wins that will take him to a new record.
He has currently had 896 rides for 192 wins at a strike rate of 21.43%.
Of course, he could possibly increase his number of rides per calendar day rate in the remaining 153 days of the season to make his task easier.
Keagan de Melo was on 181 wins from 855 rides at this time last year achieved at a strike rate of 21.17%.
His projected number of wins at that stage was 311.
However, he ended up on only 277.
That just shows that with dry spells, injury or illness and suspensions always a possibility, it is hard to keep up the relentless accumulation of wins.
Anthony Delpech is watching the record attempt with interest and commented, “Richard’s going well at the moment. There’s a long way to go but he’s on target and he’s getting the choice of rides in Gqeberha where he is very strong and he’s strong in his home base of Cape Town and in Durban. When you’ve got that strong home base and you go to Gqeberha expecting two or three wins every meeting and two or three in Durban, it makes a huge difference.”
Fourie also goes to the Highveld for the odd meeting.
KZN is Fourie’s most prolific centre, interestingly enough.
His 192 wins have been made up of 64 in KZN at a strike rate of 25.91%, 61 in Gqeberha at 23.55%, 52 in the Western Cape at 19.12% and 15 on the Highveld at 12.71%.
