SA team wins ACTS International Jockeys Challenge

Going into the third and final leg of this challenge, the South African team comprising Pierre Strydom, Anton Marcus, Robbie Fradd, Sean Cormack, S'Manga Khumalo and Anthony Delpech held a 69 point advantage. The Rest of the World (Richard Hughes, Jamie Spencer, Johnny Murtagh, Tom Queally and Hugh Bowman, Gregory Benoist) had gone 15 points up after the first leg at Turffontein, but wins by Delpech and Fradd wrested back a controlling lead for the hosts at a sodden, curtailed Kenilworth meeting.

The internationals drew closer when they cleaned up in the early legs at Clairwood on Sunday, 17 November, including sweeping the first four positions in Race 6.

At that stage, the contest was delicately poised with only 11 points separating the teams after each of the first eight races in the challenge had been won by a different hoop. The Kotzen yard then notched a double when That's Our Girl won the seventh race. She hit the front at the 300m under Robbie Fradd and kept on ahead of Circle of Speed (Benoist) to maintain a 21 point South African lead going into the last.

In the finale, Richard Hughes came scything through on Commodity Strike to snare Last Eclipse (Khumalo) and Nineteen Fourteen (Marcus). Hughes was awarded individual honours. But points secured for placings in the last enabled the South African team to maintain their narrow edge, eking out a 523 - 498 victory to wrest back the International Jockeys Challenge for 2013.