Today is an important day, in terms of horseracing.  The field for the R4 million July Handicap is announced and the draws are also made.  The draw is the gate from which the horse comes and the outside numbers really have much less chance, although the Snaiths, who trained some of my horses, also tell me that draws No 1 and 2 are very bad because those horses get trapped against the rail and don’t get a proper run.  So, it is firstly the pressure of making the field – and one must put in perspective that I’ve had racehorses winning races for me since 2003, that in all that time I only had one runner in the July Handicap, namely Do You Remember, who came third.  Just to get a runner in the July is very tough as 13 years of owning horses and only one runner shows.  It is certainly Durban’s event of the year with no other sport or social event coming close in KwaZulu-Natal and to have a runner would be a great honour. 

I expect that Master Sabina will make the field, despite one or two bad runs, because he is currently 7^th on the July log, and although they don’t issue a final log before the field is announced, I cannot see that he could have dropped more than 11 positions to outside the top 18, which ultimately comprise the final field.  At the time of dictating this blog he was considered quite an outsider at 28/1, but if he makes the field and gets a decent draw one would expect those odds to come in.  At the end of the day, it is a handicap, which means that although there will be one or two horses in the race who are probably better than their rating suggests, any horse in the race should have an equal opportunity because the better they are the more weight they are carrying, to put them at a disadvantage with the horses that are not as good as them!  A lot of people don’t like that, but it is unfortunately what makes the sport work because if the best horse in the race won the race every single time nobody would bet on any other horses and there would not be any people who would be prepared to take the bet.  The bet in turnover on the races, and the race operators take a percentage of that turnover, is what largely pays for horseracing in South Africa.  I should probably do an article on another occasion about how that is betting on the tote and not betting with the bookmakers, because the bookmakers don’t pay a fare share towards the costs of the industry and pay much less towards horseracing out of every R100 than the totes does.