Gavin Van Zyl’s Heart Of A Lion – well in here
Trainer Gavin Van Zyl looks to have found a perfect platform for the smart Seul Amour gelding Heart Of A Lion to chalk up an overdue fourth win. The joy of a standout in these Progress Plates for punters is that we can find surefire good things week after week. But let’s just take things one step at a time.
A recent handicapping review committee meeting entertained a request from trainers for the programming of additional Progress Plates to afford the decent early 3yo’s more non- feature options other than bumping hard-knocking older horses in handicaps.
The Progress Plate works on a 3kg weight penalty for each win up to a maximum of 3 wins and also allows for a 0,5kg discount for up to a maximum of 3kgs for each unplaced run in non-graded feature races.
And while it looks likely to work well for trainer Gavin Van Zyl and the 4yo Heart Of A Lion’s connections in this case, it does not always excite the racing operators in their quest to boost betting turnovers as fields are inevitably on the small side.
Banker
Trainer Gavin Van Zyl saddles Heart Of A Lion
But for punters, it means the genuine possibility of an exotic bet banker in the perpetual maze of those typical weekday tricky low grade handicaps.
Interestingly, the next closest weighted horse in the 1800m event to the MR 96 rated Van Zyl galloper is a 46 rated 8yo who has not won a race in three years.
Heart Of A Lion has shown promise ever since he shed his maiden over a mile at Turffontein in May 2013 and in so doing enjoying the honour of being the first winner for his New Zealand bred sire, Seul Amour (by Zabeel).
The stallion stands at Brad Van der Riet’s Vanree Stud.
Stakes Efforts
Piere Strydom rides Heart Of A Lion
While only a three-time winner from 16 starts, Heart Of A Lion’s fringe stakes performances are surely good enough to send this lot packing.
He ran a 3,15 length fifth in the Gr1 Premier’s Champion Stakes as a 2yo, fourth in the Gr3 Graham Beck Stakes, a 0,75 length second to subsequent Triple Crown champion Louis The King in the Listed Sea Cottage Stakes and fourth at his penultimate outing in the Gr2 Joburg Spring Challenge when just 3 lengths adrift of stablemate, No Worries.
Poor Effort
It will be of some natural concern that he faded right out when trailing in 32 lengths behind Judicial in the Victory Moon Stakes last Saturday, but ran very handily and became bogged down in the going. There is nothing in the Stipes’ Report to suggest anything amiss.
With Piere Strydom aboard, he will be in a position to dictate matters in the nine horse field.
Mike De Kock’s coupling of Semra and Kingmambo’s Legacy could chase him home at best, but both have plenty of work to do.
