And the Horse of the Season is?
This important question will be answered on Saturday night when the East Cape Horse of the Season is crowned. This is the most prestigious award of the year at the annual East Cape Racing Awards evening.
The Awards will take place on Saturday evening at a glittering occasion in the Bold Silvano Room at the Fairview race track in Greenbushes.
There were many unique achievements and performances of the past season which must be celebrated in style by the local racing fraternity. The equine and the human achievers will be honoured at the awards.
The champion stable of Alan Greeff dominated the nominations after a brilliant season. It won’t be a surprise if this stable picks up most of the awards.
Two awards that will definitely go to the Greeff stable are those of Champion Two-year-old filly and Champion Three-year-old filly.
Which horses will be the winners is still unsure though but only Greeff horses have been nominated in these two categories.
Before the winners can be celebrated, there is work to do at a good-looking meeting of eight races on Friday at the Fairview Turf track.
The speed will be on in the feature race, the R175 000 Speeders Stakes, over 1000m. Top sprinters will contest this one (race 6), and it should be a fantastic race.
The Gavin Smith stable dominated the Speedsters Stakes in recent years. Smith will be aiming to win the race for the fifth year in a row after the victories of Cruise Control (2024 & 2022), Slim Jannie (2023) and Stranger Danger (2020).
Pinnacle Stakes races at Fairview are always full of quality and ultra-competitive events. Friday’s fourth race over 2400m will be one of those – don’t miss it!
The busy September racing month started with a Turf meeting two days ago but there are still plenty to look forward to, including the Friendly City Stakes and the second leg of the Poly Challenge.
Another Poly meeting was added to the programme only last week and will take place on Wednesday, the 10th. This means Friday’s meeting will be the first of three Fairview meetings within seven days – no time to rest!
This makes September the busiest month of the year at Fairview with seven meetings in total. October will host six Fairview meetings, November five and December also five.
The current season started last month, and we saw some excellent rides from many of the jockeys. As expected, the Greeff stable was quick out of the blocks and saddled 15 winners in the first month. There were also strong showings from trainers Kelly Mitchley and Smith. Most of the trainers had a taste of victory in the first month to set them up nicely for the rest of the season.