Picture: Typeset winning easily on debut (JC Photos).

Striker Delays Retirement To Ride In Gold Rush

Piere Strydom could clinch his 5.500^th winner this weekend, as he is just three away from the milestone mark and has a number of decent rides at the Vaal tomorrow (Thursday) and at Turffontein on Saturday.

However, despite earlier saying he would officially retire when reaching that number of career winners, he revealed today he will carry on riding until WSB Cape Town Met day because he had been offered a potential ride on the Fanie Bronkhorst-trained Typeset in the R7,5 million WSB Gold Rush.

He is also associated with the promising Gareth van Zyl-trained Money Heist (Gimmethegreenlight), who is being targeted at the Grade 2 Selangor Cup and the Grade 1 R2 million Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas.

However, drawing a comparison with Frankie Dettori, who has apparently been delaying his retirement for some years, he said the retirement would still be happening and those two campaigns would likely be the last two carrots.

Typseset is currently eighth on the WSB Gold Rush log with a merit rating of 94.

None of her owners, Dr M Taljaardt, Bronkhorst himself and Mike Jolly, hold a ticket for the Gold Rush, so it sounds as if there have been some negotiations going on with one of the 16 “prospectors”.

Typeset is a typically rangy daughter of the ever-more prominent sire Futura.

On debut she went off at 25/1 odds over a 1000m trip which was thought to be too sharp, but she won easily by 3,25 lengths under Strydom.

Piere said, “She doesn’t have a lot of speed, but her class kicked in on that debut. In her next start (over 1200m) she was away sluggishly and was too far back, but ran on well for third (just 1,50 lengths behind the classy pair Ororari Gold and Feather Boa). Then Muzi was on her in her next start (also over 1200m) and she hit a flat spot at the top of the straight. She then got going late (to finish a 2,30 length second to Anfield’s Rocket). So, I think she might be better over further, because she doesn’t want to be chased.”

The big and rangy Typeset certainly strikes as one who will relish the Gold Rush trip of 1600m.

Futura’s Grade 1 wins were from 1600 up to 2000m and Typeset’s dam Muamba (by 1800m Grade 2 winner Pure Prize) won five times from 1400m to 1600m and is a half-sister to Mambo Mime (Mambo In Seattle), who won the Grade 3 Byerley Turk over 1400m, but was also placed third in the Grade 1 Daily News 2000.

Strydom rode Money Heist at 2,5kg overweight on Sunday in a Graduation Plate over 1600m at Hollwyoodbets Greyville and he said, “The overweight cost him as he only lost by a short-head. I wish he had got up, but he did give me a good feel. The target is the Cape Guineas, although I don’t know if he can win it because there are some top horses around.”

Piere does not know whether there will be any fanfare when he reaches the magical 5,500 mark.

He recalled that he was expected to reach 5,000 milestone at a Turffontein meeting, but was still one short and then rode a blank at the Vaal. The roadshow had thus moved to a Saturday meeting at Kenilworth and he had fittingly reached 5,000 on the Joey Ramsden-trained Act Of War in the Grade 2 Selangor Cup.

He recalled one or two journalists had followed him to that meeting and there was a lot of fanfare.

He said, “There was a festive atmosphere when I won, it was a really nice gesture and I appreciated it.”

Piere hopes to reach the 5,500 mark at Turffontein, as it is the flagship course of the Highveld.

His wife and family are going to be there on Saturday too.

However, he said he wouldn’t mind if it happened at The Vaal tomorrow and added, “I enjoy riding at The Vaal, I think it is one of the best courses around.”

He has been enjoying himself travelling lately to various meeting and taking his kids with him.

He said, “My fitness levels have picked up nicely and I have lost half-a-kilogram. I would like to lose a little more, but I am not putting myself under any pressure to reach my goal, I am just trying to rather enjoy it.”

He said about the knee issues that had bothered him for much of his career, “You must remember that I have ridden in thousands of other races besides the 5,500 winners and the knees take strain. When I first came back the knee issue was there, but lately it has gone. I think it must be because a bit of muscle has been built as I got fitter.”

He concluded by saying that presuming he reached 5,500 winners before the campaigns of Money Heist and Typeset, he would carry on riding regularly in order to stay fit.

So, there is a distinct possibility that this year’s Met will have the added attraction of being the legendary Piere “Striker” Strydom’s farewell day.

Picture: Champion Warrior wins in effortless style today under Luyolo Mxothwa (Wayne Marks).

Champion Warrior Puts Hand Up As Guineas And Gold Rush Contender

The Brett Crawford-trained Twice Over colt Champion Warrior impressed on debut when green and running on well over 1250m at Hollywoodbets Durbanville and he was even more impressive today over the same course and distance running in a handicap off an 86 merit rating.

Luyolo Mxothwa had him beautifully relaxed in a handy enough position after jumping from draw three.

In the straight the three-year-old colt moved into the lead and for a moment looked like he would come under pressure from a couple of others who were making runs.

However, he pulled away from them effortlessly under a hands and heels ride to win by two lengths.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE REPLAY

The Klawervlei Stud-bred colt is out of a Fastnet Rock maiden, who is out of a Sadlers Wells mare who won a Listed race over a mile and two furlongs.

So, the pedigree suggests Champion Warrior would definitely prefer further.

Owner A Gujadhur will be excited about his prospects as both a Grade 1 R2 million Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas and R7.5 million WSB Gold Rush contender.

Mr Gujadhur is not a ticket holder for the Gold Rush, but he looks sure to be approached by a “prospector” or two after today’s impressive performance.

Picture: The former Dean Kannemeyer-trained Mount Anderson (Vercingetorix) won his first start for new trainer Kelly Mitchley in Gqerberha and is topweight for the Algoa Cup (Candiese Lenferna).

Five Raiders Set Sights On Algoa Cup

4Racing

Five Western Cape stables have nominated horses to run in the R350 000 Algoa Cup over 2 000m and the R250 000 Racehorse Owners Stakes for three-year-olds over 1 600m at Fairview on 28 October.

Justin Snaith, Candice Robinson, Glen Kotzen, Brett Crawford (pictured) and Andre Nel will be raiding Gqeberha’s premier meeting.

Hoedspruit, last year’s winner of the Algoa Cup, will not be defending his title as Snaith has opted to send this son of Legislate to the Highveld where he has been entered to contest the R2 million Gauteng Summer Cup on 26 November.

Raiding trainers have dominated the Algoa Cup for more than a decade, with Jacques Strydom being the last Nelson Mandela Bay trainer to lift the trophy in 2009 after Surfin’ USA, ridden by his brother Piere, won the race.

Supplementary entries close tomorrow at 11:00, with final declarations at 10:00 on Monday 24 October.

Entries for the Listed R350 000 Algoa Cup over 2 000m (in order of draw, horse, age and sex, weight, merit rating, and trainer) are:

1 Mount Anderson (6G) 61 110 Kelly Mitchley

24 Grazinginthegrass (5G) 60 108 Alan Greeff

17 Marmara Sea (6G) 59 106 Alan Greeff

14 Crimson King (5G) 58 104 Glen Kotzen

5 Cat Daddy (7G) 57.5 103 Glen Kotzen

15 Santa Therese (5M) 57.5 103 Alan Greeff

8 Herodotus (7G) 57 102 Tara Laing

3 Jaeger Moon (5G) 57 102 Gavin Smith

19 Chollima (4G) 56 102 Glen Kotzen

25 Find Me Unafraid (5H) 56 100 Gavin Smith

2 Somerset Maugham (5G) 56 100 Justin Snaith

11 Never Ending Rain (4G) 55.5 101 Gavin Smith

12 Follow The Star (6M) 55.5 99 Glen Kotzen

9 Master Redoute (4G) 54.5 99 Andre Nel

20 Young Love (4F) 54 98 Andre Nel

13 Han Solo (6G) 54 96 Glen Kotzen

22 Peace In Our World (4G) 53.5 97 Gavin Smith

23 You Know Who (4G) 53.5 97 Gavin Smith

7 Ancient Times (5G) 53.5 95 Gavin Smith

21 London Roads (4G) 52.5 95 Gavin Smith

27 Legitimate (5G) 52.5 93 Gavin Smith

18 Arctic Drift (6G) 52 92 Candice Bass-Robinson

4 Tarantino (5G) 52 92 Zietsman Oosthuizen

6 Thefutureisbright (4G) 52 92 Justin Snaith

26 Global Ally (4G) 52 86 Brett Crawford

10 Jacob’s Ladder (5G) 52 82 Zietsman Oosthuizen

SCRATCHED:

16 Salvator Mundi (5G) 55.5 99 Justin Snaith

Entries for the Listed R250 000 Racehorse Owners Association Stakes over 1 600m (in order of draw, horse, age and sex, weight, merit rating, and trainer) for three-year-olds are:

16 Khaya’s Hope (3G) 56 107 Gavin Smith

13 Grinkov (3G) 56 104 Glen Kotzen

19 Iconic Destination (3C) 56 96 Andre Nel

12 Sand Bank (3C) 56 95 Gavin Smith

1 Allez Moris (3C) 56 88 Brett Crawford

4 Coastal Path (3G) 56 88 Alan Greeff

8 Dowser (3G) 56 88 Glen Kotzen

20 Famous And Rich (3G) 56 88 Glen Kotzen

6 Max The Otter (3G) 56 86 Candice Bass-Robinson

10 Zatara Magic (3C) 56 86 Gavin Smith

5 #Prevalence (3C) 56 85 Justin Snaith

11 Canford Lights (3G) 56 84 Candice Bass-Robinson

18 Then In Focus (3G) 56 84 Gavin Smith

2 Royal Port Louis (3G) 56 83 Brett Crawford

17 Can Col (3C) 56 79 Sharon B Kotzen

7 Indy View (3C) 56 79 Sharon B Kotzen

9 Russian Empire (3C) 56 78 Emmanuel Kaknis

15 Dammi (3C) 56 74 Alan Greeff

14 Double Destiny (3F) 53.5 94 Alan Greeff

SCRATCHED

3 Triple Time (3C) 56 90 Justin Snaith

Picture: Lyle Hewitson only just got up in the first race today which gave him his 7th win of the season and puts him in 3rd place on his own on the island’s jockeys log (HKJC.com)

Hewitson Aboard For Trainer Me Tsui’s 600th Hong Kong Winner

Lyle Hewitson was part of a milestone moment at Happy Valley today when partnering 10/1 shot Star Of Wuyi (I Am Invincible) to victory in the first race over 1000m as it gave Me Tsui his 600th Hong win as a trainer.

Watch The Replay Of The Victory Here

Me Tsui graduated from the HKJC Apprentice Jockeys’ School and rode as a jockey between 1980 and 1986, partnering 21 winners in total.

After working his way through the ranks as assistant trainer, lastly for Francis Lui, Tsui was granted his full trainer’s licence in 2005 and rapidly established himself as a force in the training ranks.

He enjoyed his best season in 2007/08 with 51 victories, which put him third in the trainers’ championship.

The trainer’s slightly unusual forename is an abbreviation of his nickname ‘Amigo’, which was considered too much of a mouthful at Jockeys’ School and so shortened to ‘Me’ – which has stuck ever since.

Tsui’s Fight Hero finished a narrow second in the KOR G1 Korea Sprint at Seoul in 2018.

He reached 500 Hong Kong wins when Sky Treasure won at Sha Tin on 8 May, 2019.

Picture: Bela-Bela and her handsome colt by Erik The Red (Varsfontein Stud)

Bela-Bela’s First Colt Earns Nickname “Etzebeth”

Varsfontein Stud’s champion Bela-Bela photographed last month with her handsome Erik The Red colt.

Being Bela’s first colt, he has already crept into the hearts of everyone on the farm and has been nicknamed “Etzebeth” because of his strong build.

Picture: Investigators for the Racing Integrity Team assembled at Parx Racing on Pennsylvania Derby Day

Barry Irwin’s Tireless Campaign Against PED’s Continues

Barry Irwin Writes For The Paulick Report

Last week as New York Yankee slugger Aaron Judge chased, tied, and eventually bettered Roger Maris’ American League record of 61 home runs, much was written by Major League Baseball scribes and general sports writers about the troubled history America’s pastime experienced in its Performance Enhancing Drug era that began around 1986 and lasted for roughly 20 years.

In the years immediately after it became public knowledge that the flurry of record-breaking blasts generated by the likes of McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and Canseco had been fueled by PEDs, MLB popularity among its fans and the general populace suffered. Eventually, it surged once again and baseball has regained its position as a very popular form of entertainment.

Horse racing — be it Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, or Standardbred — by all accounts based on visual, statistical, analytical, and chemical evidence, is very much still in the midst of its PEDs era.

This raises two important questions: can PEDs ever really be reined in and when the inevitable downturn in interest from horseplayers, fans, and the general public sets in, will those once interested in horse racing ever return in large numbers?

Thanks to many dedicated sportsmen and women — in the face of stiff and sometimes nasty opposition from those favoring the status quo — stakeholders were successful in gaining rare bipartisan support to pass federal legislation in both houses of Congress that holds the promise of cleaning up horse racing.

Even though the troops assembled to root out cheating with PEDs will not begin their duties officially until Jan.1, 2023, those bent on stopping them continue to fight against legislation that was duly signed into law by former President Donald Trump.

When the anti-doping professionals are ready to swing into action, there will be a very real fear that these men and women may not be successful in their appointed rounds, due to a smaller budget than they require, a focus on drug testing at the expense of investigative pursuits, and a holdover of employees from non-federal jurisdictions with a history of ignoring drug violations and violators.

On the recent weekend of Pennsylvania’s biggest annual day of Thoroughbred racing at Parx, when two Grade 1 races with million-dollar purses were carded, a heretofore little-known organization with the grandiose name of Organization of Racing Investigators was involved with racing officials at the Bensalem track in conducting searches that gained a decent amount of news coverage for finding syringes, a “buzzer,” and a gun illegally in the possession of licensed individuals on the backstretch.

Apparently this group has been in existence since 1991, which begs the obvious question, “Where have these backstretch cops been for the last 31 years?” While they may be well-intentioned, they have in the past at their annual meetings denied entrance of at least one Turf writer and only recently have hired a public relations employee to generate news releases like the one that detailed the findings on Sept. 27 at Parx.

My purpose in trotting out this group for inclusion in this Op/Ed is not to disparage them or their efforts in any way, but to highlight one of the issues that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority faces going forward in its efforts to identify drug cheats.

Let me explain.

Going forward, 5 Stones investigators will play an outsized role in setting up the systems that will be employed to catch cheaters. They are brilliant in their techniques and above reproach for their integrity. And their results in international sport have been astonishing at the highest level, including their part in the investigations that led to more than two dozen federal indictments in 2020. But they are a small group and they will have to rely on additions to their cadre of professional investigators.

The source of these new troops most likely will be investigators that have worked on the state or racetrack levels. They have worked for racing commissions and racing associations that have failed so miserably over the years to address concerns over rampant PED use that federal legislation had to be enacted to upgrade racing’s task in developing and maintaining a game that is conducted on a level playing field.

For years regulators have sat on their hands across the nation. And, as such, they either did not encourage their investigators to root out cheating or tamped down enthusiasm for following leads that might lead to the type of news headlines that they thought would put racing in a bad light.

And now the efforts of all the men and women that banded together to put partisan politics aside to pass legislation to save their beloved sport and their livelihoods could to a certain extent lie in the hands of so-called professionals that have let us all down year after year for decades.

I worked as a civil service employee for the better part of a decade in the 1960s, including in the Los Angeles County Probation Department, so I have seen first hand what the mentality is of those charged with upholding the law. The overriding thing I learned about these civil servants is, first and foremost, their focus is on not losing their jobs. Like politicians, they rarely choose standing up for what is right if it might jeopardize their employment status.

The rubber will meet the road sometime next year, after the anti-doping unit is up and running, when it will become known if these hitherto reluctant local investigators can be developed into a viable force for good, or if they will be as useless as they have been in the past.

Hopefully, freed of having to do the bidding of regulators with agendas not in line with the best interests of racing, these professionals will rise to the occasion and help to right the ship. There have to be plenty of local investigators that had to bite their tongues or quit their profession in the past that will welcome the chance to work for a new group that actually wants to seek out crime instead of sweeping it under the rug.

The other major hurdle for the new group charged with overseeing the sport is whether 5 Stones will receive enough funding to have a positive impact on the enterprise of catching crooks.

Setting up systems, hiring and teaching professional investigators, buying equipment, developing leads and moles is a very expensive undertaking. It is very costly and time-consuming work. If 5 Stones is inadequately funded they will have very little opportunity to succeed at a level that will be impactful.

A likely threat standing in the way of the boots-on-the-ground group’s funding is their “sister” in the exercise of catching bad guys, the science of testing for illegal substances.

Much was made of HISA not hiring the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which had an inside track for the job since inception of the idea of enacting federal legislation to stop illegal drug use in racing. I have no knowledge of exactly why USADA was bypassed for the job, but many rumors have been floated about the reason, including that it wanted to spend what was considered to be too much money on testing.

While I was a major supporter of USADA being named, I must confess that if the rumors about overspending on testing are true, that I consider this a positive sign going forward if it actually reflects the operating policy of HISA, as testing in and of itself can amount to an enormous waste of valuable and precious funding that could otherwise be used for investigative work.

It is well known in the cat-and-mouse game between cheaters and cops that tests only serve to confirm an illegal action. They rarely catch a cheater. No test works unless a test has been developed to detect an illegal substance. But testing for unknown substances is a fool’s errand. The best way to develop a test is for investigators to seize an illegal substance, develop a test and then use this info to find positives.

So grunt work by cops on the beat is the answer and requires the bulk of funding. Testing without knowledge of what one is testing for is a complete waste of time and money.

If the budget of the investigators is adequately funded and if the newly hired investigators turn out to be dedicated to their task, racing can get on the right track.

Those of us that have spent our lives in this game have enough faith in the sport and product to believe that racing can win back our lost fans and generate enough new ones to keep the enterprise from sinking into oblivion with the setting sun.

Barry Irwin is the founder of Team Valor International racing partnerships

Picture: It was a fine day for Brett Crawford (extreme left) and a team of connections pose for a photograph after Champion Warrior had landed the second leg of a double for the yard. (Wayne Marks).

Crawford Treble, Fourie/Snaith Double, De Melo Double

Brett Crawford scored a treble in the seven race meeting at Hollywoodbets Durbanville today and two of them were ridden by Keagan de Melo.

Justin Snaith and Richard Fourie also scored a double together.

Crawford goes to 27 winners for the season at a strike rate of 20.45% and his stakes earnings of R1,699,950.00 place him third on the national log.

Snaith is on 28 winners at 11.62% and he is on top of the national log with stakes earnings of R2,328,550.00.

De Melo is on top of the national jockeys log with 64 winners ridden at a strike rate of 23.27%.

Fourie is 36 winners off the pace and his 28 winners have come at a strike rate of 17.95%.

Today’s Question

The above picture was among “Australia’s best photos of the month” (The Guardian) in August.

On which racecourse was it taken?

Photograph: Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images

Vaal Classic Fields

Picture: The ruling favourite for this year’s Melbourne Cup is Deauville Legend, who is seen winning the Group 2 Great Voltigeur Stakes at York under Daniel Muscutt (Getty)

Today’s Question Answer

The picture was entitled “Heavy morning fog at Melbourne’s Flemington Racecourse on 8 August.”

Flemington is the home of Australia’s most famous race, the Melbourne Cup, which will be run this year on Tuesday, November 1.

Turf Talk Newsletter – 12 October 2022