Truly Classic! The powerfully built Sentinel tests those forearms on the way to the post
Saturday’s Cape Flying Championship is the Cape’s only Group 1 sprint and is a race steeped in a proud history over four decades. Formerly known as the Jack Stubbs Memorial Trophy, it is a speed contest that has been won by some of the greats of the quick game.
The earliest running of the race we know today as the Cape Flying Championship appears to date back to 1972, when it was run for a stake of R10250 at WFA over 1000m at Milnerton.
Formerly a Gr2 event, the Cape Flying Championship (WFA) was run as the Jack Stubbs Memorial Trophy until 1982.
In 1972 the race had its first running at Milnerton and won by Naval Action, from Miss Lindeman and Bolero.
The Sentinel Years
For the next three years the race would be dominated by the ‘iron horse’ Sentinel.
Raw statistics tell the whole story of the brilliant son of No Reprieve.
From his 56 starts, he recorded 29 wins – with 12 Gr’1s and 21 places.
The 17 hands high 600 kg athlete raced from two to seven years between 1971 and 1975. He travelled all over South Africa and won at eight different racecourses from 1000m to 1600m.
He was the first big horse ridden by a then very young apprentice Michael Roberts and was trained by another newbie in the no nonsense Joe Joseph.
Sentinel was bred by the Ellis family on their Mooi River farm, Hartford, which is now part of the estate of South African champion stud Summerhill.
Sentinel’s sire was the well-bred USA stallion No Reprieve, who only threw a handful of stakes winners but made his name thanks to the champion.
Sentinel’s mother was Winter’s Eve, a two-time winner by the Oppenheimers’ standout stallion Wilwyn and from the same crop as King Willow, Smash And Grab, Rarin To Go and Tragallian.
He dead heated with his arch rival In Full Flight in the 1972 Cape Guineas after a memorable protracted epic duel over the sharp Milnerton mile.
As a three-year-old he won eight times in 15 starts, at four it was another eight wins, at five two wins, at six three wins and at seven five wins.
Title Chase
The Cape Flying Championship, the Drill Hall Stakes, the Newbury, the Concord and the Woolavington Cup were some of the titles Sentinel accumulated.
In 1973 the Jack Stubbs Memorial was won by Sentinel, from Lords and Happy John. A year later the race appears to change names to the President’s Trophy and is run over 1000m at WFA for R10000. Again it was the brilliant Sentinel, who beat Flower Power and Bolero.
The 1975 Jack Stubbs Memorial run over 1000m, again at Milnerton, is popularly described as the ‘cherry atop a fabulous career’.
On a perfect Cape summer day, seven-year-old Sentinel whipped talented speedster Harry Hotspur, with two other precocious youngsters lengths back in third and fourth – they were two names you may recognise. Archangel, in a Guineas prep and Syd Laird’s Yataghan.
Behind them were some names that may bring back memories to the more established race fans., In order of finish it was Pat O Neill’s Mexican Summer, the Leslie Cawcutttrained Blood Sport, Bon Vista, Ocean City, and two subsequent speed sires in Flower Power and Bolero.
Gold Circle’s Chief Operating Officer Graeme Hawkins put it mildly, when he labelled that group ‘what a field!’, in the course of assisting us with our research.
Sentinel was to go on and win the Duco Dulux Cup and the Woolavington Cup before retiring to stud at Hartford.
He sadly proved to be low on fertility. Seven of his progeny made it to the racecourse and only one failed to register a win. The best was the filly, Protectress, who ran second in the 1979 SA Oaks. Sentinel would have been 45 years old had he lived into these turbulent times.
Shadows
In the 21st century, there are a few names that stand in Sentinel’s ominous shadow.
Summerhill Stud’s outstanding sprinter Nhlavini is one. His name is Zulu for ‘playboy’, and he lived up to that sort of reputation on the racetrack.
The son of National Emblem must be the only horse to have lined up six times for an Equus Award, where he walked away with the championship on three occasions as the nation’s leading sprinter, the last time at eight years of age.
Nhlavini won the Cape Flying Championship twice and went down by the narrowest of margins when beaten by the outstanding sprinter Laisserfaire in 2002. That year the prestigious sprint was run for R250 000 and sponsored by Italian car-maker, Alfa Romeo.
The sponsor may have driven off into the sunset, but Nhalvini was to return.
He made the Cape Flying Championship and Diadem Stakes his own. He won three consecutive Diadems and two Cape Flying Championships in 2005 and 2006.
Nhlavini died in 2012.
The Laird Legacy
Rebel King was a yet another Charles Laird trained son of National Emblem to win the Cape Flying Championship.
He toppled the Mike Bass pair of Blue Tiger and Gaultier in 2009. Rebel King has his first crop racing this season and celebrated his first winner in December, when Leta’s Bonnet won at the scene of one of his great triumphs.
Mike Bass made it a clean sweep in 2011, when the brilliant champion sprinter, What A Winter beat his stablemates Rushing Wind and Blue Tiger.
In fact the beautiful grey Riverton Stud stallion Blue Tiger, sometimes described as ‘the best horse never to win a Gr1’, had an enviable record without winning the Cape Flying Championship.
He ran 2nd in 2009, 2nd in 2010 and then third in 2011 at his final attempt. The son of Counter Action stands for a serious value fee of just R 5000 at Duncan Barry’s beautiful stud in Robertson.
Var’s brilliant daughter, Val De Ra, now retired and in foal to Oasis Dream, foiled What A Winter’s dream of a double, to win a race billed as the ‘sprint of the century’ last year. It was to be her penultimate racecourse appearance prior to her retirement.
She had the outstanding sprinter JJ The Jet Plane well beaten too. The Gr1 Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Sprint winner had no answer to the Avontuur flyer.
History could well repeat itself on Saturday, with another superbly fast daughter of Var in a hurry to rewrite the record books!
