The only thing that was predictable about the July, as I wrote, was that as usual it was unpredictable.  For me it is sad that the biggest day in horseracing, for the South African public anyway, is a day at a track where good horses seldom win and where it invariably turns into a lottery.  It means that the average South African has a perception of horseracing as being little more than a lottery when it is so much more for the other 364 days of the year!  The fact of the matter is that we go, for example to Turffontein on Champions Day, the champions will normally win, a lot more favourites will win, and where they don’t win you may well have suspected that it was a race that was due to be won by the second or third favourite.  It will not be one outsider after another outsider winning every race.   

Master Sabina ran a good race.  The race however for him was over from a few steps after the race began.  In other words, for 2 minutes of the race, I knew that he could not win and that is because, from a good draw, he ended up third last in a slow run race with a win from behind.  That means when they got to the final straight and started their sprint home, he was approximately 13 lengths back and had zero chance of catching everybody.  He came from 16th to 9th in that time and caught up approximately 10 lengths, meaning if he had been mid-field he would not have finished further back than third, but most probably would have been second.  He was the third fastest finisher, out of a field of 18 horses, over the final 400m.

It all went wrong shortly after the start when the jockey, Gavin Lerena, said that a gap opened up in front of him and for half a second he hesitated as to whether to take the gap or not and by the time he decided to take the gap it was gone.  He said that it was his fault and I appreciate that, because with a course of 18 jockeys in the race not everyone will get the tactics and the strategy right.  

The bottom line is Master Sabina’s race was doomed from the start and with racing you target the next race which will probably be the eLan Gold Cup which is towards the end of July and it is a very long staying distance race and after that we will certainly go for the Summer Cup again in November.  If he takes his place in the field it will be the fourth consecutive year that he has been in the field, although the one year he did not run because he was injured just before the race when he was the second favourite.