The L’Ormarins King’s Plate was a cracking race this last Saturday at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth in Cape Town. Charles Dickens ran a blinder into second beaten by Al Muthana.
Dylan Cunha writes on his blog, www.dylancunharacing.co.uk, that the interesting thing for him is that the winner was trained by Ricky Maingard, who used to be a great trainer in South Africa and trained the likes of Wolf Power, still seen in British and USA pedigrees as well as Bodrum, Respectable and many more top horses.
The low-profile Ricky Maingard has struck early in the Cape! (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
He fell out of flavour(sic), as trainers do, and went to train in Mauritius.
At this time, my father purchased his legendary yard and I trained there and our family lived there up until the day we moved to the UK in 2020.
Ricky then returned from Mauritius and moved down to Cape Town and has set up with a couple of horses and in his first few months banged out the biggest Gr1 Mile in SA this last weekend.
It was a world class race and I’m interested to see if the winner goes to the Breeders Cup as it’s a win-and-you’re-in race.
Ed – Dylan Cunha trained Strategic News to win the Summer Cup back in 2007. He is now training at Newmarket, UK. Dylan is also an ultra-marathon runner as well as a former airline pilot.
