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Justin Snaith holds aloft the WSB Met trophy, which he had just won for a fourth time at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth on Saturday. Snaith had six winners at the meeting. (Picture: Wayne Marks)

Justin Snaith almost certainly became the first trainer in SA history to have won both the July and the Met three times in succession when the Lancaster Bomber colt Eight On Eighteen passed the post first in Satuday’s WSB Met under Richard Fourie.

Terrance Millard won three successive Julys but not three successive Mets, while Mike Bass won four successive Mets but his three Julys were well spread out.

It will need to be checked whether Fred Murray’s four successive Julys from 1910-1913 and Jim Russell’s three successive Julys from 1918 to 1920 were ever matched by three successive Mets.

Justin’s three successive July wins were with two horses, Do It Again (Twice Over) winning in 2018 and 2019 and Belgarion winning in 2020, and his three successive Met wins came with thre different horses, Jet Dark (Trippi) winning in 2023, Double Superlative (Twice Over) winning in 2024 and Eight On Eighteen winning it in 2025.

Richard Fourie rode two of the July winners mentioned above, Do It Again in 2019 and Belgarion in 2020, and has ridden two of the above-mentioned Met winners too, Jet Dark and Eight On Eighteen.

Snaith has won five Julys in total and Saturday was his overall fourth Met win.

Fourie produced a finely judged ride.

Finding cover in midfield from draw nine, he steadily made up ground on the pacemaker Oriental Charm, who was angled on to the outside fence, and the handy Montien, who was briefly overtaken by the filly Red Palace before fighting back.

Fourie went inside of the latter embattled pair and won by half-a-length from Oriental Charm, who stayed on gallantly. Montien was a 0,90 length third.

 

Eight On Eighteen wins the WSB Met under Richard Fourie (Picture: Wayne Marks)

Piere Strydom said See It Again had been more settled without the blinkers, but he had not jumped well and that saw him being further back than he had expected.

See It Again chased Eight On Eighteen in the straight and late in the race started coming into the picture. He was the fastest horse at the line, producing a late charge between Montien and Rascallion, but he was unfortunately 1,10 lengths shy and could only claim fourth place.

It was See It Again’s second successive Met fourth place finish.

Rascallion was fifth and Red Palace sixth.

The Met had become a good option for Eight On Eighteen after One Stripe had won the L’Ormarins King’s Plate, because Eight On Eighteen had been beaten only 1,25 lengths by One Stripe in the Gr 1  Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas.

However, Eight On Eighteen is unlikely to be given a merit rating as high as One Stripe’s 132 (which makes the latter the official best horse in the country at present).

THe Met field finished in a heap on Saturday, which usually makes the handicapper reluctant to rate the race too highly.

Two obvious line horses are Oriental Charm, who was the Hollywoodbets Durban July winner, and Rascallion, who was the Met runner up last year and came into this year’s race off a win in the Gr 2 Anthonij Rupert Wyne Premier Trophy over 1800m.

With Oriental Charm as line horse Eight On Eighteen will get 126 or 127 and with Rascallion he will get 124 or 125.

That is not to say Eight On Eighteen won’t get better.

It was only his seventh career start and he looks to have plenty of scope for further improvement.

The legacy of the champion broodmare Mystic Spring gained a new milestone as Eight On Eighteen became the first of her descendants to win Cape Town’s biggest race, the WSB Met.

It is significant that Eight On Eighteen is still an entire, because his late sire Lancaster Bomber has proven to be very influential and he was responsible for two Gr 1 winners on the day, which meant the son of War Front has now had four individual Gr 1 winners from just two crops to race.

Earlier, the Glen Kotzen-trained Lancaster Bomber filly Rascova had won the Gr 1 Maine Chance Farms Majorca Stakes , pipping her arch rival Double Grand Slam.

Fittingly, Rascova was bred by Vaughan Koster’s Cheveley Stud, which was where Mystic Spring stood.

Eight On Eighteen was bred by Gaynor Rupert’s Drakenstein Stud, which was where Lancaster Bomber stood, and that meant Drakenstein have bred the winner of the Met for the second time in the last three years, having also bred the 2023 winner Jet Dark (Trippi).

Gaynor’s husband Johann is in fact a part-owner of Eight On Eighteen, who runs in the colours of prolific owner Nick Jonsson.

It was the third successive year the Met winner had run in the Jonsson colours and it has been achieved with three different horses, Jet Dark, Double Superlative (Twice Over) and Eight On Eighteen. That is likely a record and one that will take some equalling.

Jonsson has not only owned the last three Met winners, but his runners finished first, third and fourth last year and first and fourth this year.

Eight On Eighteen became just the fifth three-year-old since the war to win the Met.

One remarkable fact is that those five-three-year-old winners, Feltos (1945), Horse Chestnut (1999), Badger’s Coast (2000), Oh Susanna (2018) and Eight On Eighteen, have only three trainers between them as Mike De Kock trained both Horse Chestnut and Badger’s Coast, while Justin Snaith is the trainer of Oh Susanna and Eight On Eighteen. Oh Susanna was the first three-year-old filly to win the Met for over a hundred years.

All of Snaith’s three male Met winners will likely stand at stud.

Jet Dark is already standing at Drakenstein, Double Superlative was earmarked for stud and Eight On Eighteen will be one of two valuable successors to Lancaster Bomber, the other being the Snaith-trained Gr 1 Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas winner Snow Pilot.

It was not surprising Eight Of Eighteen ended up in the yard of Justin Snaith as he is out of the unraced Captain Al mare Sempre Libre, who is out of Mystic Spring, which makes her a half-sister to the champion Snaith-trained three-times Gr 1-winning filly Bela-Bela and also to champion three-year-old colt Rabiya.

The family is rich in black type performers, although most of them are females and Eight On Eighteen will likely become the first stallion descendant of the legendary mare.

Mystic Spring was a full sister to the first British Classic winner Michael Roberts rode, the 1991 2000 Guineas winner Mystiko, and it was Roberts advising Karen Newsome of Springfield Racing that the latter had been a good fast ground horse that was partly behind the decision to send Mystic Spring to South Africa.

The country can certainly be grateful for that decision as the black type beneath Mystic Spring’s name continues to burgeon.