Mandla Moyo, Sports Reporter
IN today’s edition of equine news, we are rewinding the clock by a few days to 2 July the day on which the Johnny Dardagan Pinnacle race was held at Borrowdale Race Course.
This befitting memorial race was held in honour of one of the most active members locally, Johnny Dardagan, who passed away in Cape Town recently.
As a tribute to him, the local horse racing fraternity saw it noble to take a bow to this ardent fan of the sport as well as horse owner by recognising his passion through holding this 1 700m long contest.
A total of seven top class birds were loaded for the battle which was won by Yarraman directed by Walter Shumba flying the Gokhan Terzi colours.
The first runner-up was Mr Greenlight directed by jockey Nkululeko Sibanda followed closely by Wantage with jockey Jarryd Penny in the irons.
Horse racing analyst, Sheldene Chat said Jonny will be greatly missed at Borrowdale and that he was indeed faithful to the sport.
“Jonny Dardagan will be greatly missed as he had been a faithful Borrowdale owner for many years, we need all our owners now than ever,” said Sheldene.
When asked what she thanks about the good hand of conditioning a horse that Gokhan Terzi is displaying plus the fact that one of his horses won the OK Grand Challenge including many more other horses on the day but in different events, Sheldene said even though the Champion trainer is yet to be selected those achievements put him in a better position to be named the winner come end of the season which is due a few weeks from today.
Meanwhile preparations for the 2 000m Zimbabwe Oaks Listed race set for 18 July at Borrowdale are gathering momentum.
As part of the preparations the custodians of the sport locally Mashonaland Turf Club has pushed out a provisional list of six nominees for this event.
Alongside this main event there are nominees for all the seven supporting acts to make a total figure of (84) in total.
In due course the Weight and Draws stage will be rolled out followed by the acceptance stage before Wednesday next week.