The Western Winter gelding, Yard-Arm, owned and
bred by Mike Rattray’s Lammerskraal Stud, has won the R500 000 Turfstar
competition for this season, but the R100 000 Tipstar competition
for the country’s media tipsters will go down to the wire.
Yard-Arm amassed 30 points in graded feature races run under the
Gold Circle banner in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal and, after
Zolaroyale was beaten into third place in the Mercury Sprint last
weekend, it left Yard-Arm in an unbeatable position. Mike Rattray
will receive a cheque for R450 000 on Canon Gold Cup Day and his
trainer, Geoff Woodruff will receive R50 000.
The Tipstar competition is a lot closer and, while the Phumelela
Tipsters in the Racing Express supplement to The Citizen maintained
their lead of 12 points over Johan Stassen of The Herald, Monty
Mariemuthoo as Bobby Bean in Top Turf moved into a clear third place
after selecting Zolaroyale to run third in the Mercury Sprint.
There are five graded races on All Stars Day at Clairwood Racecourse
on Saturday and with a total of 76 points up for grabs. Effectively
this means that the top 13 positions could change dramatically on
Saturday. Tipsters will be poring over their racecards in a bid
to win one of the top three prizes of R60 000, R30 000 and R10 000.
The points positions on the Tipstar log going into Saturday’s big
racemeeting at Clairwood are:
1 Phumelela Tipsters – The Citizen (Racing Express) 280
2 Johan Stassen – The Herald 268
3 Monty Mariemuthoo – Top Turf (Bobby Bean) 256
4 Chad Cooke – Daily News 252
5 Damien Paterson – Pretoria News 250
6 Andrew Harrison – The Witness 247
7 Etienne Louw – Beeld 241
8 Richard McMillan – Mercury 240
9 Gold Circle Tipsters – Official Racecard 237
10 Chris Ntuli – Ilanga 236
11 Phumelela Tipsters – Computaform 226
12 Harold Sterley – The Star 218
13 Eric Beyleveld – Superform (Clocker Riley) 209
14 Matthew Lips – Winning Form 202
15 Ronald Madikane – Daily Sun 196
16 Des Cooney – UmAfrica (Gonondo Omplophe) 191
17 Lionel Derbyshire – Sowetan 184