Punters shell-shocked as two hot favourites fail to win

If anyone had suggested that Charles Dickens (1-5) and Captain’s Ransom (1-4) would both be beaten at Kenilworth last Saturday, they would have been carted off to the nearest lunatic asylum.

Yet that’s exactly what happened on the final day of the Cape season leaving punters shell-shocked as two household names failed to reward their supporters.

That both horses started at such cramped odds suggests many backers may have lumped their monthly salaries on the twosome — notably Charles Dickens.

Before the SplashOut Cape Derby, some pundits were already comparing Charles Dickens with the best three-year-olds we have seen in action in the past two decades. Other warned on social media that these experts were getting a little ahead of themselves, and they were right.

Charles Dickens went into the grade 1 race with a merit rating of 132 — 18 points superior to his nearest rival, At My Command. KwaZulu-Natal raider See It Again had a rating of 104 so connections were probably hoping for a place.

In fact, the son of Twice Over, a three-parts brother to Do It Again, was brought with a perfectly timed challenge by Piere Strydom to sweep past the favourite and win by more than a length.

The victory gave Michael Roberts his first grade 1 success and the trainer had been banging the drum for some time that owner Nic Jonsson’s colt was a top sort. Roberts has ridden such champions as Mtoto so he is not one to confuse his geese as swans. Not that there have been that many swans in his stable in recent years.

In the long post-race interview, winning owner Nic Jonsson paid tribute to Roberts, Strydom and Milnerton trainer Paddy Kruyer who had housed See It Again during the Cape season. Bred at Drakenstein stud, the three-year-old is one of Jonsson’s cheaper buys and cost him only R125,000 at the Cape Premier Yearling sale.

This was Charles Dickens’ first attempt at 2,000m and possibly he didn’t get the trip. He will bid to put this setback behind him in the forthcoming KwaZulu-Natal season.

Captain’s Ransom went to post in the grade 3 SplashOut Prix Du Cap as the winner of 13 of her 18 starts. This looked like the perfect race for her swansong and the chance for her many supporters to give her a rousing send-off.

Unfortunately, sport has a habit of not following the script and this was the case with Captain’s Ransom with cause for alarm as soon as the gates opened. “She was difficult coming out of the stalls,” jockey Richard Fourie said.

In the home straight, jockey Sean Veale kicked for home on Denis Drier’s filly Live My Life and Captain Ransom’s fans  expected the favourite to pick up the leader and race away for another win. It didn’t happen with Live My Life — a R1.1m daughter of Gimmethegreenlight — keeping on gamely to score by a length and a half.

“This is a special moment for me,” said Drier who was surrounded by well-wishers on his final day of saddling runners in the Cape.

While owners Suzette and Basi Viljoen will be gutted that Captain’s Ransom got beaten on her last racecourse appearance, Fourie was full of praise for the daughter of Captain Al saying: “She’s been phenomenal to us all and I’ve won 11 races on her. I’m going to miss her.”