Trip Of Fortune on the way to the start under late substitute rider Raymond Danielson after Aldo Domyer was booked off ill (Candiese Lenferna Photography). 

South African sports fans must be among the most bandwagon sub-cultures in the world and accordingly large numbers often cotton on to a thread without any of them having checked the facts.

One of the threads doing the rounds after the Hollywoodbets Durban July is that Winchester Mansion was able to win the big race only because the entry of Trip Of Fortune enabled him to carry a lesser weight than he would otherwise have done and it was thus a manipulated result.

Completely false.

In fact if Trip Of Fortune had not been supplemented it would have been easier for Winchester Mansion.

Without his supplementary entry the weights would have been set on Zapatillas who would have then been scratched on the Wednesday after the setting of the weights. 

So without Trip Of Fortune being supplemented Winchester Mansion would have carried 54,5kg and See It Again would have carried 58,5kg. 

With Trip Of Fortune in the race Winchester Mansion carried 53kg compared to the 56,5kg of See It Again.

So with Trip Of Fortune in the race he received only 3,5kg from See It Again instead of 4kg … and that is not to mention the view of some that it is harder for a three-year-old to give weight to older horses when carrying a big weight than when carrying a lesser weight.

Drakenstein’s racing manager Kevin Sommerville was transparent a couple of days before the race about the reason for Trip Of Fortune’s supplementary entry.

He said it gave Drakenstein one more runner and the opposition one less, which therefore gave them a mathematically better chance of winning the race.

The decision proved justified because Trip Of Fortune, who finished a 5,90 length seventh carrying 60kg, was the third best performed runner in the race and he was the second home of the five Drakenstein Stud homebreds.