The lady trainers dominated the early show at Turffontein on Saturday.
After Alyson Wright saddled the Starling Stakes winner, Dorrie Sham continued the momentum of the telephone number carryover-injected Pick 6 and saddled the winner of the inaugural running of the R800 000 Allied Steelrode Gr2 Onamission Mile.
Hindsight is an exact science, but the 16-1 price tag about the Tanzania-based Stonebridge family’s home-bred Bingwa now looks a tad generous on the turnaround at the weights with Got The Greenlight on their last clash.
But life is always easy afterwards and hats off to Vaal-based veteran Dorrie Sham who was celebrating her biggest Gauteng feature success on a memorable day for the yard.
Chase Maujean is looking straight ahead as Bingwa steamrollers them (Pic – JC Photos)
Having cut down from fifty plus horses to just 24, which includes 7 babies, the Gr2 success for the consistent 4yo Bingwa was a well-deserved and commendable feat of training. It now gives them a range of options.
An elated Dorrie said that it will be up to the Stonebridge’s – whose son Dale was on course to do the honours – whether Bingwa takes his place in the Gauteng Summer Cup, or travels to the Cape for their summer season.
Lightweight rider Chase Maujean rode a cracker and his body language was oozing confidence as he let Bingwa slide through his hands at the 500m.
Bingwa kept galloping and extended his advantage to 3,25 lengths at the line. He clocked 99,52 secs for the mile and had the ever-prominent Astrix (25-1) behind him.
MK’s Pride always runs his heart out but produced no spark when called upon. He stayed on a quarter length behind his stablemate in third.
Mike de Kock’s lightly-weighted Al Muthana (5-2) ran on Late for fourth. A decent Summer Cup prep.
Got The Greenlight was dawdling at the rear off the at-times pedestrian pace and made up some ground late to run just over 5 lengths off the winner.
Bingwa was registering his maiden stakes success and has now won 4 races with 8 places from his 17 starts for stakes of R815 850.
Bred by Colin and Lynne Stonebridge, the winner is a son of Sandown Stud-based Pathfork (Distorted Humor) out of the two-time winning Century Stand mare, Marauding Lady.
Bingwa is at tenth position on the Gauteng Summer Cup log.
