Jack Milner
Trainer Lucky Houdalakis and owner David Shawe could not have wished for a better outcome in the R500,000 World Sports Betting Grand Heritage as their runners finished first and second in this Non-Black Type event over 1475m at the Vaal on Saturday.
However, it was not in the order predicted by most tipsters as it was 14-1 shot Duke Of Sussex who came flying up late to catch the more fancied Dyce (15-2) to win going away by 0.50 lengths.
Dyce, ridden by Muzi Yeni, looked the winner with 100m to run but JP van der Merwe had other ideas as he brought Duke Of Sussex with a powerful run down the outside to snare his stablemate in the dying stages.
This place went to Whafeef (33-1) followed by Outofthedarkness (25-2), Chyavana (40-1) and Gallic Tribe (10-1).
TAB paid out six places on this race.
Houdalakis looked flabbergasted at the result. “Duke Of Sussex was always aimed at this race so when he won his last start I didn’t want to run him again and incur more penalties because this was his target.
“Dyce came in through the back door, he was supplemented. So the horse targeted for this race actually won the race.
“But if I told you he was better than Dyce, I actually would be lying. I think Dyce is a classier horse.”
The Quartet returned an excellent payout of R108,746 but if you were a TAB account holder, you would have got back 10% of your stake if the initial bet size was R100 or more.