Picture: Cousin Casey powers to victory in the Listed Gatecrasher Stakes (Candiese Lenferna)
Glen Kotzen and family had a rewarding double on Saturday at Hollywoodbets Greyville as the progeny of horses dear to their hearts were the respective winners.
In the Listed Gatecrasher Stakes over 1400m Grant van Niekerk got Cousin Casey (Vercingetorix) over from a draw of eight to take the lead and the impressive-striding colt kept going in fine fashion to win by an easy 1,90 lengths.
Kotzen said, “His dam Bretton Woods is a full sister to Big City Life so Cousin Casey is from our family who have been so dear to us.”
Cousin Casey’s grandam Dollar Crisis was sent to Casey Tibbs four times. The results included a two-time winner; the Durban July-winning four-time Grade 1-winner and Equus Champion Three-year-old colt Big City Life; Cash Register, a Grade 3-winning four-time winner who has produced four stakes winners, Speedpoint, Point Of Sale, Snapscan and Chat Ching; and now Bretton Woods looks to be following suit as she had already produced twice Listed-placed Klever Kathy before Cousin Casey earned himself black type on Saturday.
Glen continued, “Ravi Naidoo is the owner of Cousin Casey, he has the unique colours of the french grey with the violet cap, which are just absolutely beautiful. We are going to see a lot of Ravi Naidoo in the future, he is getting into racing in a big way. He is in syndicates with Gaynor Rupert and friends. In his own right this is his first stakes winner in his colours, which is fantastic, but there will be many more to come. He is very enthusiastic, he loves the pedigree side of it. He’s a deep thinker and loves going back generations to find the nicks. He is from KZN but he is now living in the Cape.”
Glen continued, “Vercingetorix is a superstar and unfortunately we don’t have many of them, we missed the boat. He was a phenomenal racehorse and has a fantastic female line, so we sent our mares to him, but they didn’t take. So we were a little unlucky and now they are just too expensive and hard to come by. The home grown stallions have shown they can do it in this country.”
That brought him to his second winner of the day, the two-year-old filly Hold My Hand, who waltzed away with the last race over 1600m to win by four lengths under Richard Fourie. This filly is by the former Kotzen-trained Cape Guineas runner up, Gold Standard (Trippi).
Glen said, “I think he is going to be a super, super stallion, if he gets the chance and gets the support. I think you will see them getting better and better as they go around the bend. He has only had two winners but a number of places from a number of runners, but the ones that are going around the bend are starting to win.”
Hold My Hand is a Drakenstein Stud homebred and Glen said, “Kevin (Sommerville) said to me ‘Come and pick one of the best two Gold Standards we’ve bred’, so I picked this one. She looked just like her father, or actually more like her father’s father. She’s got that beautiful classic head and she looks like a classic filly and that’s what they are. She was not getting her full weight for age allowance on Saturday against older horses so it was impressive.”
Both of these horses might be seen on Hollywoodbets Durban July day in the Grade 2 two-year-old features over 1400m, the Golden Slipper and the Durban Golden Horseshoe respectively.”
