Cape racing sad and pathetic

Would love to see the big name Cape trainers bring their big guns to the Highveld for the Autumn season.

With the closure of Clairwood (no disrespect to Scottsville), surely there are some big guns that would just love the long straight at Turffontein to show their mettle.

I know Captain America will be coming, would love to see Legislate and Futura in the mix as well

Saint Tropez wrote: Would love to see the big name Cape trainers bring their big guns to the Highveld for the Autumn season.

With the closure of Clairwood (no disrespect to Scottsville), surely there are some big guns that would just love the long straight at Turffontein to show their mettle.

I know Captain America will be coming, would love to see Legislate and Futura in the mix as well

.... but the question is....why don't the big guns want to race in their own province. Surely there must be a reason.

Deeno wrote:

Saint Tropez wrote: Would love to see the big name Cape trainers bring their big guns to the Highveld for the Autumn season.

With the closure of Clairwood (no disrespect to Scottsville), surely there are some big guns that would just love the long straight at Turffontein to show their mettle.

I know Captain America will be coming, would love to see Legislate and Futura in the mix as well

.... but the question is....why don't the big guns want to race in their own province. Surely there must be a reason.

No big races in Cape now that the Met is done ??!!

Cape Racing is dominated by the big boys. Snaith has over 200 horses. Bass & Crawford are probably closest. While Ramsden, Marshall, Kotzen must have about 100 area.

You then look at the smaller stables. Say they have 30-45 horses and some don't have that. Not all of them are decent or often are 2nd choices to the major owners (the breeders, resell/shirtcliff, jooste, beck, van huysteen, Mitchell, ridgemont ). Tough for the small owner to compete as competition is extremely tough with all the breeders keeping preferred options a lot of the time.

So the smaller stables might have 5-10 horses who are running open races. The open races are dominated by the big trainers because they dominate the maidens and not all of their horses can run a race.

Take Snaith. From the 9 Jan to Met day I would say all his best horses ran and some ran twice. You can never tell me he could have had a big string at these meets immediately after our major part of the season. He has the majority of our best horses and often has 2, 3 or 4 in a race. You then add Bass, Crawford.

On the racing and the cape crawl etc Try thinking about the conditions and running in a stiff south-easter. It isn't rocket science why going at a fast pace would put trainers and jockeys off. You got to try and box smart with conditions. Very different to the other major centres but I reckon we got fair results on our major race days.

Snaith's lesser 3 year old winners are quickly shifted off to PE. A lot of the unsuccessful 3 year-olds from most stables are quickly sent to PE or Kimberely and I also think the average 4 year-old and 5 year-olds are sent to PE/Kimberely too soon as well.

Cape racing of yesteryear was really enjoyable with an abundance of top yards.With the likes of Terence Millard, Peter Kannemeyer, Ralph Rixon, Chris Snaith, Mike Bass, Geoff Woodruff, Patrick Kruyer, Greg Ennion, Alan Higgins ,Steven Page,late Guy Rixon, late James Lightheart, Piet Steyn, Andries Steyn, Dr.Lf Naude, Pat o neill, G w Collins, A.Nicholas, Stan Elley, G Winshaw, Eric Sands, Len Taylor, and a few others, the racing was top class and competitive.
The tracks were also well maintained and Durbanville with the hedges was a really tight specialist track which made the Computaform include in its comments " has won at Durbanville".

Milnerton with the near and far bends and the 1400mt straight course is really a great loss to Cape racing imo.

Indeed Mike.

I still say if Paddy Kruyer and Eric Sands got more support they would be up there on the trainer logs. Both are proper horseman and proven Gr1 winning trainers if given support.


Heard that there may be a top Cape Town trainer going overseas. Well he certainly has the option to go. A pretty good one.

Controlled by breeders ?

If they keep the fields small statistics can look better

AllIsSecret wrote: Indeed Mike.

I still say if Paddy Kruyer and Eric Sands got more support they would be up there on the trainer logs. Both are proper horseman and proven Gr1 winning trainers if given support.


Heard that there may be a top Cape Town trainer going overseas. Well he certainly has the option to go. A pretty good one.

Who JR?

Karma wrote:

AllIsSecret wrote: Indeed Mike.

I still say if Paddy Kruyer and Eric Sands got more support they would be up there on the trainer logs. Both are proper horseman and proven Gr1 winning trainers if given support.


Heard that there may be a top Cape Town trainer going overseas. Well he certainly has the option to go. A pretty good one.

Who JR?

BC seemingly has options in Singapore

I often wonder to what extent the fact that the traditional 'middle market' has steadily declined in recent years has influenced this trend.

It could be argued that CT has a surfeit of top horses whilst Durban, for example, has deteriorated to the point where it is made up primarily of moderate horses with really top performers few and far between. The upside of this situation is that it appears that Durban finds it far easier to accurately programme races for their horse population whereas CT might be missing the mark consistently.

I have often broached the topic of ownership with 'newbies' who have expressed a mild interest in ownership. As soon as they are appraised as to what it costs to keep a horse in training they lose interest; usually citing a multitude of competing attractions for their limited recreational rands. Contrary to what many believe CT is nowhere near as well heeled as it may like to present itself. A substantial % of local horse ownership is foreign which also possibly contributes to the seasonal bottleneck as trainers endeavour to prepare horses for racing on the 'big days' whilst their foreign owners are here in CT on holiday.

Having raced in Cape Town since early 1970 I also need to mention that racing still elicits the following response from a LOT of people that the industry would like to attract into ownership : ".....but isn't racing a bit dodgy?"

Fortunately they probably haven't heard of ABC. If they followed the threads that appear here they would have little or no reason to change their perceptions.

I see they have lost a meeting to PE next week

Yikes

Bob Brogan wrote: I see they have lost a meeting to PE next week

Yikes

I cannot see the PE fields being much bigger with trainers given such short notice.