Muzi Yeni will be hoping to salute on Royal Victory again (Candiese Lenferna Photography)
Nathan Kotzen would have preferred his Betway Summer Cup winner Royal Victory to have had two races into the Gr 1 Premier’s Champions Challenge, but there were no suitable races.
Summer Cup-winning rider Muzi Yeni will be aboard on April 6 in the 2000m weight for age contest at Turffontein Standside.
They will jump from a plum draw of three this time as opposed to the draw 13 they had in the Summer Cup.
However, this is a weight for age contest whereas in the Summer Cup they carried bottom weight of 54kg and were in fact 1kg under sufferance.
So this is going to be a harder task, but on the other hand Royal Victory did win by a comfortable 2,25 lengths.
In fact on the margins of beatings and the weight turnarounds there is not a single horse from the Summer Cup who comes out better than Royal Victory.
Nathan admitted, “It’s not going to be easy, but it never is.”
He continued, “I was hoping to get another run, but the program did not suit me. I galloped him today (Tuesday) and I’ve got another gallop to go and he will then hopefully be right.”
He is hoping to have his final gallop on the Hollywoodbets Greyville turf.
The four-year-old Pathfork gelding had a deserved holiday on the farm after his Summer Cup victory.
In his comeback run he ran a decent 1,90 length third in te Non-Black Type Fever Tree Handicap over 1400m at Hollywoodbets Scottsville.
Nathan said Royal Victory was very well and said he had always been a “good doer”, which is horse parlance for those who eat well and maintain their condition well.
“He loves food,” confirmed Nathan.
One of the keys to victory in the Summer Cup was the excellent journey from Summerveld to Turffontein that Royal Victory enjoyed on the private float of Nathan’s long-time owner Ted Hughes.
Nathan said after the Summer Cup, “Ted owned those two big horses Merlin From Berlin and Paybackthemoney, who were 17 hands so he had the float extended higher. You know what Ted is like with his vehicles, he wants everything perfect otherwise don’t do it at all. You can see by his fleet of trucks, they are immaculate. He has even got a camera so you can watch the horses when they travel. You could see the horse stood deadstill. That float doesn’t even move.”
Ted and Nathan will take Royal Victory up to the Highveld on the same float and will leave at the same time relative to the race that they did last time.
