The Grade 3 Jubilee Handicap (Race 8) over 1800m headlines the weekend’s nine-event Highveld fixture on Sunday 8 June with the Turffontein Standside track hosting several top-level performers on a feature-race card that includes three Non-Black Type contests, including two for juveniles.
In the day’s main event, the most interesting runner in the race is Hollywoodbets Durban July entry The Equator who makes his South African debut for Tony Peter after beginning his career with Aidan O’ Brien in the Northern Hemisphere.
This well-bred son of breed-shaping sire Galileo has run six times – two in England and four times in Ireland – and has been imported for a potential career at stud.
It would be a remarkable training feat and speak volumes of the horses’ constitution were he to make a winning comeback 288 days after his last racecourse appearance. However, it is worth noting that top jockey Richard Fourie has been engaged to ride The Equator who would go some way to securing himself a spot in the Saturday 5 July showpiece with a forward showing.
At the weights, though, and on all exposed form, Sean Tarry-trained Let’s Go Now is the horse to beat. This Gimmethegreenlight filly beat male opposition when winning the Grade 2 Colorado King Stakes over 2000m in her latest outing under Fourie and races off the same mark as the best-weighted runner in the lineup with Craig Zackey taking over the reins.
In her last course-and-distance appearance, Let’s Go Now finished a creditable third in the Grade 1 SA Fillies Classic won by exported Gimme A Nother, a Grade 1 participant at Saratoga on Sunday morning (SA time).
Tarry’s charge has improved since fitted with a tongue-tie and is maturing into a proven Stakes performer, and a repeat of her last-start performance should suffice in the Grade 3 topliner.
Zackey gave Fabian Habib-trained Confederate an enterprising frontrunning ride to get this son of Fire Away to win the Grade 1 SA Classic in the three-year-old gelding’s first venture beyond 1600m.
He missed his last intended start in the Grade 1 Daily News 2000 a fortnight ago because of elevated TC02 levels so has had to be rerouted to the Egoli Mile (Race 9) to put the finishing touches on his Durban July preparations.
Confederate beat subsequent Grade 1 winner Fire Attack in the SA Classic and that is by the strongest form in the race. Zackey will have options open to him from gate No 2 and Confederate, who has never finished out of the first two in eight starts (winning four), is good value to make a winning reappearance 14 weeks after his Classic success.
In the two juvenile races, it could pay to follow the progress of Rachel Wall (Race 6) and Red Penny (Race 7).
Clive Robinson
