Fast And Fit. The Corne Spies trained Snow Call is a course and distance winner and won’t lack experience
The R150 000 Listed Ruffian Stakes is the ladies’ equivalent of the afternoon’s juvenile double feature at Turffontein on Saturday. There is no standout prospect in this race and the field may be the best option for Jackpot and Pick 6 punters looking to survive the leg. But be warned. De Kock may have another bomb lurking in the shadows.
Improvement is a natural factor when reviewing juvenile form but when it comes to eleven two year fillies, then anything is possible. The cocktail is made more toxic by virtue of the fact that only six have won a race, four are maidens and there is also one unraced Mike De Kock filly making her debut.
Debutante
The filly in question is named Majmu. She is a grey daughter of Redoute’s Choice out of a two time winning Hussonet mare. And by suggesting her prospects, we are not scoffing at the prospects of the raced fillies. Like Banaadeer, Majmu races in the blue and white strip of Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum and cost Aus $300 000.
A son of Danehill, Redoute’s Choice can get them to run early and if she is half as quick as her stablemate (the More Than Ready hotshot), she could win this on debut.
In the last twelve months Redoute’s Choice has hit career milestones such as siring 100 stakes winners, reaching 24 individual Group One winners with two new classic winners, leading the sire averages at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale and Magic Millions for the ninth consecutive year and covering an exceptional book of blueblood mares during his first season at the Aga Khan’s Haras de Bonneval in France.
If Majmu was not ready to win this, then she would be running in maiden company, surely?
Winners
But let’s look at the winners. Chris Erasmus’ Captain Rock has been rested 15 weeks since a winning debut over the Vaal 800m. The daughter of Seventh Rock showed good speed beating Captain’s Diva a half length. The latter won just last week after three more tries when scoring over the Vaal sand 1000m.
Mike Azzie saddles the Australian bred daughter of Tale Of The Cat, Flame Cat who beat Silent Rush by three lengths at her second start on Gauteng Guineas day. She was very impressive and meets Silent Rush (with Strydom up) and having to give the Houdalakis filly 3kgs.
Spies Trio
Corne Spies saddles a trio of three fast recent winners, who are bound to be ready to take on all comers here. Fransie Naude rides the obvious stable elect in Snow Call, who won well at her third time of asking. Corne’s Girl finished 2,25 lengths behind Snow Call and could be held again.
Sherman Brown rides the recent Kimberley runaway debut winner Gee I Jane . She is difficult to assess on this surface, but it would not be the first time that the stable switches surfaces with success.
Crest Of The Wave
David Nieuwenhuizen’s Way West filly Green Crest was a recent course and distance winner beating Arrive At Five going away. A cheapie (she cost just R20 000), she may just be held by Snow Call on her first try.
Diane Stenger’s By Jove ran on well on her course and distance debut three weeks ago and she will be expected to improve further. Barend Botes’ Annapolis showed pace when fading out on her Vaal 1200m debut. Paul Peter’s Mystic Express was well beaten behind Flame Cat on Saturday and looks unlikely to improve to bank a cheque here.
Ruffian: Better Than Secretariat
The brilliant Ruffian is buried near a flag pole in the infield of Belmont Park, with her nose pointed toward the finish line. A dark bay or brown filly of 16.2 hands, Ruffian was foaled at Claiborne Farm, near Paris, Kentucky. She was bred by Stuart S. Janney, Jr. and Barbara Phipps Janney, owners of Locust Hill Farm in Glyndon, Maryland.
Ruffian’s eleventh race was run at Belmont Park on July 6, 1975. It was a match race between Ruffian and that year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pleasure. It ended in tragedy. Ruffian was sired by the Phipps family’s Bold Ruler stallion, Reviewer, and out of the Native Dancer mare Shenanigans
Ruffian posthumously earned the 1975 Eclipse Award for Outstanding Three-Year-Old Filly. In 1976, she was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. The Blood-Horse magazine ranked her 35th in its list of the top 100 U.S. thoroughbred champions of the 20th Century; she is the highest-rated filly (or mare) on the list, and the only female horse on both lists (best female, best horse).
Sports Illustrated included her as the only non-human on their list of the top 100 female athletes of the century, ranking her 53rd. In the summer of 1975, the folk singer Joan Baez dedicated a version of the song “Stewball” to Ruffian. Since 1976, the Ruffian Handicap has been run in Ruffian’s honour. Until 2009, the race had been held at Belmont Park (on Long Island, New York), but it was moved upstate to Saratoga Race Course in 2010.
The Ruffian Equine Medical Center was opened on May 26, 2009. It cost $18 million and is located outside Gate 8 of Belmont Park. Inside the facility, specialists work to solve problems before they become major issues, such as a colt showing lameness that can be diagnosed and cured before he makes the track, perhaps providing such an animal a chance to do his job and even have a good life beyond the track.
The trainer of Secretariat, Lucien Laurin, said to the press, “As God as my witness, she may even be better than Secretariat.” Ruffian has many titles, such as: “Queen of the Fillies”, “Queen of the Century”, “Queen of Racing”, “Queen of the Track”, “Filly of the Century”, “The Super Filly” and so on, all implying that she is the greatest female racehorse.
Several books about Ruffian have been published, such as Ruffian, Burning from the Start or Ruffian, A Racetrack Romance and Ruffian or The Licorice Daughter and My Year with Ruffian.
