Ricky Maingard said Saturday’s L’Ormarin’s King’s Plate winner Al Muthana had come out of the race very nicely.
He added, “We will just need to make a couple of adjustments, nothing serious, to ensure he can run well enough in the WSB Met. We will obviously give him a deserved couple of day’s rest.”
He continued, “I am pragmatic, I have been in racing for a long time so have both feet on the ground, and I am fully aware Jet Dark and Kommetdieding will be completely different propositions over 2000m, they are better than him over that trip … Al Muthana’s father Deep Field was a sprinter. However, Al Muthana has proved in Durban and on Saturday that he is as good as them over a mile and if there is one Grade 1 middle distance race in the country that can be won by a top class miler it is the Met, so we have to take our chances.”
Maingard also pointed out that Al Muthana’s below par runs in the Hollywoodbets Durban July and HKJC World Pool Champions Cup had followed a long, hard season.
He revealed how the private purchase of Al Muthana had happened.
He said, “Some of my owners in Mauritius had become disenchanted with the way racing was going over there and didn’t want to buy any new horses. They asked me to find a nice horse-in-training in SA who could run in feature races. I asked Grant Knowles, who is a good friend of mine, to look for one. He suggested a couple who I looked at and didn’t think would be good enough. He then said we could buy Al Muthana. I looked at him and saw he definitely had the potential.”
A private sale with Al Muthana’s owners and breeders, Shadwell, was subsequently concluded.
However, Al Muthana then arrived with a couple of issues.
The Maingard team put in a massive amount of effort to get him sound enough for his comeback run over a sprint and then a massive amount of effort to get him right for the King’s Plate, which ended up being a race against time.
Initially a veterinarian was brought over from Mauritius to look at his issues. In association with Ricky’s assistant trainer Kitt Kensley, “who is an exceptionally good farrier”, special work was done on his feet to prevent the speedy cuts which had been effecting him. The vet also recommended a special electronic blanket, which was imported from overseas at great expense to aid in the healing process.
He said no stone had been left unturned in the unbelievable effort that had ensued with “every member of the team playing their part.”
He himself said he had come over to Cape Town from Mauritius earlier than anticipated because he realised he would have to be there every morning, including Sundays, Christmas Day and New Years Day, in order to monitor Al Muthana’s well-being in what was going to be a race against time. The goal of the effort was to have him at a level where he would be able to run to his full potential in the King’s Plate.
He said, “We had to see how far we could go to get him to the fittest possible level without hurting him any further. We succeeded in our goal in the end, so this was a very good achievement by everybody who played their part.”
Previous trainer Mike de Kock and his team would have no doubt had to go through the same meticulous attention to detail in his preparation for the Hollywoodbets Gold Challenge back in June, where he beat Linebacker by 0,40 lengths with Jet Dark beaten 0,60 lengths into third.
On Saturday the presenters Grant Knowles and MJ Byleveld were wowed by how well Al Muthana looked in the preliminaries.
Ricky said, “I would be lying if I say I expected him to win, but I thought he looked pretty well and I thought he would run a good race. I don’t understand how the bookmakers had him at 80/1. If I had been thinking like them I would not have bothered asking the owners to fly out from Mauritius.”
The form was there for all to see as Al Muthana had beaten Jet Dark the last time he had run over a mile and, furthermore, he looked exceptional in the preliminaries.
Ricky said, “Some have said Charles Dickens did not run to his best, but he still beat the two best horses in the country, he ran a great race but just found somebody to beat him on the day … that’s horseracing.”
He praised the fine ride of Bernard Fayd’Herbe, who landed his sixth win in the prestigious weight for age race.
Fayd’Herbe’s tactics and the execution thereof showed why he has for a long time been regarded as one of the best big race riders in the country, although he did pick up a R40,000 fine for overuse of the whip.
Ricky part-owns Al Muthana together with Messrs D K Bundhoo, P G Joubert, K Kathapermal, M H Maingard & T R McCrow & Mrs M M M Bundhoo.
The owners were clearly ecstatic after the win and full of praise for the training team.
It was one of the finest training feats seen in SA for some time and Maingard proved why he has been regarded for decades as one of the best trainers in the Southern Hemisphere.
His Cape Town yard consists of only four older horses, six babies and two recent pucrhases, a total of 12 in all, and he wishes to expand to about 25 to 30 horses.
There should be a demand for his skills after landing the third King’s Plate/Queen’s Plate of his career.
He won this big race twice with the mighty Wolf Power in 1983 and 1984.
Wolf Power went on to finish second in the 1983 Met before winning the 1984 Met, despite essentially being a miler.
However, Ricky added, “But he was an exceptional, world class horse. He was a great miler and was possibly even better at 1400m because he had tremendous speed and acceleration and could go flat out the whole way over 1400m.”
