hibernia Wrote:
> Roberts lists the match race as the greatest race
> he was involved with..
Roberts' recollection of the race is not quite the way it happened, presumably because he couldn't see behind him.
In those days I routinely split-timed all races, to be able to understand what happened in races.
I looked up what I'd written at the time. It also sketches a bit of background to the match race.
It's a bit long, but you might enjoy it.
Here goes:
The press had a field day when the final field for the R300.000 Gr1 Germiston November handicap was announced late last October. The feelings ranged from indignation to outright condemnation of the Transvaal team of handicappers, which had seen fit to eliminate the horse Senor Santa after final declaration had been made by trainers. The elimination had become necessary in order to reduce the final field to the maximum allowable sixteen runners.
Senor Santa’s trainer Pieters was quoted in the press as being “stunned” about the official reason given, which was that the handicappers regarded Senor Santa as a sprinter, unable to do himself justice over the Germiston 1600m. Pieters was further quoted as having said that he had “purposely campaigned Senor Santa in such a way that he would get into the November handicap with a low weight”.
It wasn’t the first time that the Transvaal handicapper had eliminated a horse from a big race on the grounds of stamina, or rather, lack thereof. Two years earlier Desert Legend was eliminated from the same race, on the same grounds. At the time Desert Legend’s track record was, if anything, better than that of Senor Santa over distances longer than sprints.
What critics in the Senor Santa case failed to appreciate, however, was that Senor Santa had been in at the weights ‘under sufferance’, in other words, that he had been handicapped below the allowable bottom weight of 50kg as decreed by the Jockey Club. In that he was not alone. Senor Santa was one of 13 horses eliminated from the race, all of whom were in the same boat.
Although officially race-figures are not used in the setting of weights for big handicaps on the Rand, a glance at the weights for the race shows that the race-figure concept (in a nutshell, allocation of weight according to the number of races won) was very much used. Under those circumstances, the elimination of Senor Santa (with five wins the ‘lowliest’ winner in the field) was no surprise at all. After all, Cape Guineas winner St John’s Wood was weighted with 50kg, as was Winter Winner – both without doubt deserved preference over Senor Santa, whose most recent races before the elimination had been B-division wins over 100m and 1200m, hardly the preparation of a miler for a Gr1 race over 1600m And in any event, the handicapper’s opinion of Senor Santa being a sprinter was only used in the process of elimination of horses weighted under sufferance already. In that the handicapper was fully justified.
That said, it is of course not the handicapper’s job to decide whether a horse will stay a given distance or not. And clearly, had Senor Santa been weighted at, say, 50.5kg he would certainly have been allowed to run. The real culprit in this case was the race-figure method. That Senor Santa would have found a place in the November field had ‘real’ handicapping been practiced is beyond doubt given his track record – and he wouldn’t have come in with bottom weight either.
As a result of Senor Santa being denied a run in the November handicap, his connections challenged the eventual winner Northern Princess to a match. The point was to prove that Senor Santa did stay a mile, and should have had a run. Northern Princess’ connections sportingly accepted the challenge, and the match was run late in December over a mile at Greyville, for a stake of R150.000. Match races are predictable in that they either develop into a tactical battle between two jockeys, or in a straight test of speed and stamina, both horses going full out over the distance of the match. In the case of Northern Princess and Senor Santa it had to be the latter – Senor Santa had proven himself a sprinter out of the topdraw, and if a tactical race was run the colt would simply outsprint the filly up the straight.
The match turned out to be a most exciting affair, and a superb example of jockeyship by Michael Roberts, who had been engaged for Northern Princess. When the gates opened both horses broke well, with Roberts setting a pace which was spot on: 24s for the first 400m, 48s for the first 800m, and through the 1000m in 60 seconds. The pace was kept up evenly: 1200m in 72 seconds, and the last 400m marginally faster, Northern Princess finishing in just under 1m36. Roberts put his stick away in the final stages and rode the Princess out with the hands – she had given all there was to give. It had been the right approach to the problem from the Princess’ point of view, but it took a jockey of Roberts’ class to execute it to perfection, the fast, even pace being the secret.
What of Senor Santa? Shortly after the break, his jockey dropped hi9m some five lengths behind Northern Princess. Which is when the match was lost. Five lengths is roughly the equivalent of one second, which means that Senor Santa had to make up one full second to get level with the Princess, and more to beat her. With the perfect pace set by Roberts, Senor Santa, having given away the early ground, would have had to run the match in under 1m35s to win – too much to ask even of a champion. Even so, halfway up the straight Senor Santa accelerated impressively and at one stage looked as if he had the filly’s measure. But the ground he’d given away voluntarily took its toll in the final 100m, exactly where it mattered most. Northern Princess beat him by half a length (she was in receipt of 1.5kg sex allowance). That Senor Santa got as close as he did was remarkable, and there can be little doubt he would have beaten the filly had he stayed in closer touch early on. As it was he proved that he did stay a mile (he did run it in under 1m36 as well from where he came from, and thus arguably could have won the November handicap), although at the weights he ran somewhat below his best sprint form. Presumably, what got him as close was his undoubted class, which often makes horses stay further than they really do. But the old adage that you can give weight, but not start, once again proved correct
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