After twenty years at the Summerveld grindstone, trainer Wendy ‘Cookie’ Whitehead broke the male stranglehold on the 2021 SA Champions Season honour roll for the second time in just over a month when the classy Keep On Dancing registered a fifth win from her last six starts.
Anne and Bruce Nicholas of Hallmark Thoroughbreds bred and race the light-framed temperamental galloper who settled beautifully and swept to victory in the R250 000 Gr2 Track & Ball Oaks at Hollywoodbets Scottsville on Saturday, to give retired SA Champion sire Silvano a feature double on the afternoon.
A protégé of top trainer Tony Furness, from whom she took over in 2001, Wendy Whitehead has done a sterling job in holding the well conceived plan together and keeping the recent Listed East Coast Cup winner on an upward curve since a modest MR 70 Handicap polytrack victory four months ago.
Wendy and her team enjoy the big moment (Pic -Candiese Lenferna)
Reigning SA Champion jockey Warren Kennedy rode his third winner of the day as he produced Keep On Dancing with a sustained late rattle and she stayed on really smartly to beat the 33-1 Electric Surge by just over a length in a time of 152,23 secs.
Kannemeyer’s Silva Magic (6-1) made up good ground to edge the original pacemaker Mama Pyjama (33-1) into fourth.
Warren Kennedy said that he knew he was a runner when he managed to settle Keep On Dancing in mIdfield ‘without any hassle’ and switched off. He felt that Luke Ferraris upping the tempo out front halfway through the race on the Kotzen’s Catchafallingstar had worked well for him.
Warren Kennedy has Keep On Dancing out front at the right time (Pic -Candiese Lenferna)
Trainer Wendy Whitehead that Bruce and Anne Nicholas and said that that the winner was difficult to train.
“But Warren gets on well with her and it was a plan come together. I must thank my staff and I was told that she is like a piece of elastic and that she would win this!”
It’s great to see the smaller local yards enjoying success in the big season.
Wendy started out with Craig Ramsay at Golden Acres with pre-training and Stud farm duties. She then went on to work for former jockey-turned-trainer Snowy Reid at Summerveld as assistant trainer for 2 years before joining the stable of Tony Furness. She took over after 11 years when Mr Furness retired in 2001.
Keep On Dancing is out of the Zimbabwe champion, and top-class producer, First Arrival (Northern Guest). The latter is dam of eight black type horses including the Gr1 winning champions Let’s Rock’ n Roll and the exported In The Fast Lane.
Keep On Dancing has won 6 races with 4 places from her 16 starts for stakes of R477 500. This victory certainly adds to her already substantial paddock value.
Watch the race replay here:
