If making the right choice in horseracing was easy, all bettors would be wealthy.
While some pundits spend hours studying race cards to find the form runners, others make their selections based on names, trainers, jockeys, the colours of the silks or even just lucky numbers.
With a very challenging card facing racegoers at the Vaal come Thursday 13 January, drawing numbers from a hat might even be the most successful way of making the right choice – except in Race 3, where the Mike de Kock-trained Right Choice looks like the banker bet of the day.
This Global View-filly will be aiming for a fourth straight win when she contests Race 3, a FM 95 Handicap over 1200m down the Vaal straight.
It took a while before the penny dropped for De Kock’s charge as she only shed her maiden tag at the thirteenth (lucky for some, unlucky for others) time of asking.
But it dropped like a bomb, and she ran out a 10.75-length winner.
Her two subsequent victories also came over the course and distance she has made her own, which makes her very hard to oppose in this contest where only nine runners are carded to face the starter.
Considering that she also boasts five runner-up finishes on her resume, it is obvious that a winning instinct is ingrained in her DNA.
Although her Merit Rating has been upped by a staggering 18 points to the current 81 since the start of the season, she has cleared every hurdle since tasting success, and it won’t surprise if she keeps on climbing the MR ladder on Thursday.
As an added bonus, she has the benefit of 4kg-claiming apprentice jockey Kaidan Brewer in the saddle. That means she will be shouldering only 49kg when the gates crash open at 13:15 local time (19:15 Singapore time).
The biggest danger is the unbeaten Rafeef-filly Moonshiningthrough, trained by Johan Janse van Vuuren.
This speedster scored her second career victory on the notoriously difficult Turffontein Inside Track and is expected to continue her front-running tactics.
The contest between these two fillies looks like the highlight of the day.
Preview by Clive Robinson
