What I like best about racing people is that despite the haters on Facebook and Descartes and the odds and the science and the linear logic, they will repeatedly abandon sense, sleep and safe accounting practice to put themselves on the line because they stubbornly believe in magic.
‘I only survived last season because I won the Hollywoodbets Challenge and sold two horses to Mauritius’
The unique KZN competition reaches a grand finale at Hollywoodbets Greyville on Friday evening with R100 000 first prize to each of the winners and five further cheques down to sixth place
With fourteen runners at Sunday’s Hollywoodbets Scottsville meeting, Summerveld-based Garth Puller enjoys the prospect of a good day
For a long time, starting in the second half of last decade, the going was palpably advantageous towards the inside of the Scottsville sprint track
The only handicap on the annual festival of speed Gr1 programme, the Tsogo Sun Sprint is a battle down the 1200m straight that has often produced its fair share of fairytales and hard-luck stories
‘Horses are being ‘pulled up’ and finishing unplaced and way back in barrier trials – and then reversing form and winning on debut after big market moves and betting coups’
With the news that multiple Hong Kong champion jockey Doug Whyte will be trying his hand at training, Michelle Wing of Racing News canvassed some ex-jockeys who have made the move to training
A large contingent of friends, family, former clients, jockeys and a range of racing personalities congregated at the Milnerton Golf Club on Thursday to bid a final farewell to Cape Racing Hall Of Fame trainer Peter Kannemeyer
Trainers humour owners. They blame and chop and change jockeys. It’s in the nature of things and just one of the survival tools in the pressure cooker of competition and dire economics that is horseracing in the 21st century
Just 48 hours after Cheeky Wink’s smart win at Tipperary, the Kieswetter and Heffer families enjoyed another champagne moment at Sandown
Ridgemont’s Rafeef fairytale received more endorsement on the Championships Finale at Turffontein on Saturday when his daughter, Chasing Happiness, ran her eight opponents off their feet to register her second stakes success when winning the TAB Gr2 Senor Santa Stakes
The number of entries compares favourably in quantum with recent years, with 58 first entries received in 2024, 60 in 2023, 68 in 2022, 53 in 2021, 52 in 2020, 49 in 2019, and 69 in 2018
Ironically, it was a colt which provided Alan with a first Gr1 success, this being Alec and Gillian Foster’s homebred Cereus, who landed the 2001 Gold Cup at Hollywoodbets Greyville, his victory completing a momentous double on the day, with the Gr2 Golden Slipper having gone the way of juvenile filly Tatler, a great-great-great grandaughter of Sun Lass!
