Senor Santa 1-2 For Ridgemont’s Rafeef

Senor Santa 1-2 For Ridgemont’s Rafeef

This article was originally published on Sporting Post

The R500 000 TAB Gr2 Senor Santa Stakes at Turffontein on Saturday produced a fairer sex 1-2 for Ridgemont’s outstanding Redoute’s Choice stallion Rafeef, with both the top two racing in the famous Wernars silks.

Once popularly labelled ‘the thunder from Down Under’, the stature of Ridgemont’s super sire Rafeef, a champion, by a champion, out of a champion, continues to grow with every passing big raceday.

His legendary sire Redoute’s Choice is no stranger to producing top-class stallion sons, having also produced the likes of four times Australian Champion Sire Snitzel, the hugely successful Not A Single Doubt, and Golden Slipper winning and producing sire, Stratum.

The Rafeef fairytale received more endorsement on the Championships Finale when the 4yo Chasing Happiness, a filly with a ‘high cruising speed’ in the words of a delighted Smanga Khumalo, ran her eight opponents off their feet to register her second stakes success.

Starting at 10-1, Chasing Happiness looked value at the price and delivered a 1,70 length victory over the year older Mrs Browning (50-1) in a time of 67,43 secs for the 1160m.

The Rafeef exacta paid R303,40.

The first fancied runner home, the grey Truth (13-10) maintained his consistent formline, and stayed on for third, with Pistol Pete (9-2) capping the quartet.

Raced by the Wernars family, the Ridgemont-bred winner was a R200 000 National Yearling Sale buy and took her stakes total to R789 875 with her sixth  win and 5 places from 14 starts

The winner is out of the high-class three-time winner Kalami (Daylami), whose sire also ranks as the damsire of prominent Australian sire and champion Pierro and St Leger winning sire Logician, among others.

In a Ripley’s believe it or not moment, we hear that Chasing Happiness was apparently named after her trainer, Johan Janse van Vuuren.

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published.