The Vaughan Marshall-trained two-year-old Pathfork filly Inside Voice provided Hollywood Racing with their 100th win of the season. (Picture: Wayne Marks).
One of the sidewhows for the season will be whether Hollywood Racing can better their most number of wins in a season of 124 and whether they can hang on to their lead in the national owners championship.
Hollywood reached the magic number of 100 wins in a season last Sunday at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth when the Vaughan Marshall-trained Beaumont Stud-bred Pathfork filly Inside Voice won a 1000m contest under Sean Veale in her third career start.
Using a formula that takes Hollywood Racing’s current number of runs per calendar date for the season and their current strike rate for the season into account, Hollywood were predicted at that stage to end the season on 122 wins, two short of their record.
However, their treble at Hollywoodbets Greyville’s polytrack on Wednesday increased the forecast to 125.
It is the fourth season in succession that Hollywood Racing had had over 100 wins.
However, the big one will be to win the national owners championship for the first time.
The championship is decided on stakes earnings.
It is believed that restricted races are excluded from the championship but it will have to be clarified with Equus because the NHA figures include restricted race stakes.
On the figures currently showing on the NHA site, Hollywood Racing were more than R3 million clear of perennial rivals Drakenstein Stud.
Drakenstein Stud would likely need to win the R5 million Hollywoodbets Durban July to make up the leeway.
They don’t seem to have the horse to do it with as the only one of theirs in the top 20 on the July log is Future Swing and they only part-own him.
Hollywood Racing look to be a racing certainty to take the title, but that is assuming the figures that the Equus Awards use correlate to some extent with the NHA figures.
There was much controversy in the 2020/2021 season when Chris van Niekerk was narrowly on top when restricted race stakes were included, but Suzette Viljoen was declared the narrow winner as she moved to the top when the restricted race stakes were excluded.
