The battle of the stars is now in full swing to find the top South African horse, jockey and tipster. The race in each category is now wide open and plenty to play for with a total of R700 000 up for grabs.

The competitions for the horses (Turfstar), jockeys (Topstar) and tipsters (Tipstar) are linked to the South African All Stars Series of races being contested in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. The competitions run through to the end of the season (July 31, 2005) with R500 000 to be shared between the owner and trainer of the horse winning the Turfstar competition and total prizes of R100 000 for each of the Topstar and Tipstar competitions.

With seven legs of the competitions now having been run, there has been a considerable change in the overall scores. As expected, due to the variety of races involved, the Turfstar competition has seen a different winner in most of the events and the horses having scored the winner’s 10 points are Tyson, Winter Solstice, Rabiya and Nhlavini with Shadow Dancing now having gone clear having won two of the races to lead the competition on 20 points.

For his third place in the J&B Met, Winter Solstice is now a clear second with 14 points.

In the Topstar competition Cape Town’s Glen Hatt has taken a commanding lead with 34 points, having won The Table Bay Fillies Guineas, the Queen’s Plate and the Fancourt Majorca Stakes as well as taking third place in the J&B Met. Weichong Mawing, who was placed in the Gommagomma Summer Cup, The Table Bay Fillies Guineas, the Queen’s Plate and the Fancourt Major Stakes is in second position on 18 points. With 10 points each are Piere Strydom, Piet Botha, Gerrit Schlechter, Anton Marcus and Garth Puller who joined the hunt for the first prize when he won the J&B Met.

The biggest change in fortunes, however, has come among the tipsters in the Tipstar competition.

Damien Patterson of the Pretoria News, who was one of the joint leaders after the first two rounds, has continued to have success and scored a further four points on the J&B Met meeting to be in second position on 36 points while Richard McMillan of The Mercury has rocketed up the table from a lowly early position to take the lead on 40 points after tipping the winners of both the Bloodstock SA Cape Guineas and the Graham Beck Wines Cape Flying Championship, then scoring well with correct tipping of the J&B Met minor placings.

In joint third place on 30 points are Rob Bechus who tips for Computaform, the Gold Circle Racecard tipsters and Johan Stassen of The Herald. Lionel Derbyshire of the Sowetan and Harold Sterley of the Star are each on 28 points with the balance of the 20 competing tipsters on 26 points or less.