Charles Dickens has been awarded probably the highest merit rating in SA history for a three-year-old in December.
The NHA handicappers have given the son of Trippi a 128 after winning his first Grade 1 on Saturday, the Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas, which saw him remaining unbeaten after six starts.
Charles Dickens has captivated the imagination! (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
David Thiselton writes on www.goldcircle.co.za that this can be compared to the 121 of Hawwaam by the time of the July. Hawwaam had by that stage won six out of seven races and his three Grade 1 wins included a 4,10 length rout of older horses in the Grade 1 Champions Challenge.
Double Superlative was given a 125 after his Cape Guineas win last year. However, he failed to build on that rating.
Charles Dickens is the third highest rated horse in the country at present behind Jet Dark (130) and Kommetdieding (129).
If the Hollywoodbets Durban July was run tomorrow with the latter pair and Charles Dickens entered, Jet Dark would carry 60kg, Kommetdieding 59,5kg and Charles Dickens 57kg.
The maximum a three-year-old is able to carry in the July is 57kg, although in this case a true handicap would give him the same weight as there is a weight for age allowance of 2kg for three-year-olds at the time of the July.
However, he is probably odds-on to not be seen in the July. He might even be a short price to not be seen running again in SA.
The Drakenstein homebred will be a natural and already highly valuable successor to the top Drakenstein sire Trippi, who is in his twilight years as a stallion.
Trippi was the most expensive sire ever brought to SA at the time of his import and has had phenomenal success. On top of that Charles Dickens has an increasingly good female line.
His dam Demanding Lady won five times, including the Grade 2 Ipi Tombe Challenge, and is by Dynasty, who was almost as celebrated as Charles Dickens as a three-year-old and he went on to be a top sire.
Charles Dickens is the third stakes performer Demanding Lady has produced and both of the others, Charles and Somerset Maugham, are full brothers to Charles Dickens.
Charles was a runner-up in all of the Grade 1 Cape Derby, the Grade 2 Charity Mile, the Grade 3 Track And Ball Derby and the Listed Langerman.
Somerset Maugham has to date won the Listed Settlers Trophy over 2000m and was third in both the Grade 3 Legal Eagle Stakes over 1800m and Grade 3 Pocket Power Stakes over 2400m. Charles Dickens has to date won the Listed Somerset 1200, the Grade 3 Cape Classic over 1400m and the Grade 1 Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas.
Ribot
Charles Dickens is in-bred to one of the greatest unbeaten thoroughbreds in history, Ribot, and has an unusual three lines of him via his sons Tom Rolfe, who is in Trippi’s pedigree, and Ribocco and His Majesty, who are in Demanding Lady’s pedigree.
Adding credibility to the high ratings Charles Dickens has been given are the words after the race of Richard Fourie and Piere Strydom.
Fourie said he had never been in race before where an opposing horse had put in such a performance.
Piere Strydom heard these words and said he had experienced it before from a jockey’s perspective when racing against Horse Chestnut, who generally vies for the title of the greatest SA thoroughbred in history, together with Sea Cottage.
However, one of South Africa’s most respected racing analysts, Karel Miedema, appears to be the only dissenting voice.
In his ratings on Raceform.co.za he rates last year’s Cape Guineas as better than the 2022 renewal.
Miedema works on an international ratings scale, which will always be lower than SA’s merit rating scale. The latter does not pretend to be on the same scale as international ratings, although our handicappers do also keep international ratings for our horses.
However, Miedema gave Double Superlative a 113 ability rating for his win in last year’s Cape Guineas, but only awarded Charles Dickens a 110 for his victory on Saturday.
Miedema gave last year’s Guineas runner up Pomp and Power an ability rating of 111 for that run and gave Cousin Casey a paltry 101 for his runner up finish on Saturday, which is the same rating he gave third-placed At My Command.
Miedema gave Cousin Casey a 107 for his win in the Grade 2 Cape Punters Cup over this same course and distance.
Time will tell whether his isolated interpretation is correct.
However, the visual interpretation is often more accurate than ratings on paper and the way Charles Dickens accelerated and stormed home was a spectacular sight in the opinion of just about all and sundry.
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