After the first two legs of the SA All Stars Series indications are that all three competitions, for horses (Turfstar), jockeys (Topstar) and tipsters (Tipstar), are going to be hotly contested.

In the Turfstar competition, Tyson and Shadow Dancing each have 10 points for winning the GommaGomma Summer Cup and The Table Bay Hotel Fillies Guineas respectively. Gang Related (GommaGomma Summer Cup) and Fair Maiden (The Table Bay Hotel Fillies Guineas) each have six points for second place and Ilha Da Vitoria (GommaGomma Summer Cup) and Joshua’s Princess (The Table Bay Hotel Fillies Guineas) on four points for finishing third.

The Topstar competition there are three riders at the top of the log on 10 points each.

Piere Strydom for winning the GommaGomma Summer Cup, Glen Hatt for winning The Table Bay Hotel Fillies Guineas and Weichong Maiwing for his third in the GommaGomma Summer Cup and second in The Table Bay Hotel Fillies Guineas. Kevin Shea has six points for his second in the GommaGomma Summer Cup and Piet Botha has four for finishing third in The Table Bay Hotel Fillies Guineas.

The Tipstar competition for the country’s media tipsters is very competitive with three tipsters heading the log on 20 points each.

Damian Patterson of the Pretoria News, who finished third in the inaugural tipsters competition, the Gold Circle Racecard tipster and Rod Bechus of Computaform, each have 20 points. Johan Stassen, who was second in the first competition is next best on 18 points and Chris Ntuli of Ilanga has 14 points.

Henk Steenkamp of Die Burger and Mel Kaplan of Racing Express are on 12 points each with Andrew Harrison (Witness), Etienne Louw (Beeld), Des Cooney (Umafrika) and Lionel Derbyshire (Sowetan) each on 10 points.

The competitions run through to the end of the season (July 31, 2005) with a R500 000 prize shared between the owners and trainer of the horse winning the Turfstar competition and total prizes of R100 000 each for the Topstar and Tipstar competitions, these prizes being split between the three recording the most points in each competition.