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It’s also a World Pool day at Greyville.
Greyville. Picture: Gerhard Duraan/Gallo Images
A Pick 6 with a likely pool of R10-million tops the betting menu at Sunday’s Gold Cup race meeting at Greyville.
It is a last chance to play for outsize payouts for a while as the fixture is a climactic send-off of the 2025 season.
It’s not just the Pick 6 that will draw in punters. The Quartet on the World Pool Gold Cup itself – South Africa’s most important marathon race – is predicted to top R2-million, thanks to TAB bunging in a R500,000 carryover.
As the big-race sponsor indicates, the meeting is a Hong Kong World Pool event. This means all TAB betting (accessible through Betway) on the card will be comingled into gigantic pools hosted by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and open to punters in racing centres around the world.
The World Pool bets are Win, Place, Exacta, Quinella and Swinger. These bets must be in multiples of R2 – for example, R8, R10, R12 and so on.
In addition to the Gold Cup, Race 7 on the card, four Grade 1 contests and five other feature events make up the 10-race bill of fare.
The R1.5-million HKJC Champions Cup over 1800m is the headline grabber as it sees Durban July champion The Real Prince taking on Equus Horse of the Year Dave The King, who won the race last year.
These two charismatic stars were level-pegging at 1.36 for the Win on Wednesday afternoon.
The Mercury Sprint sees some of the country’s best speedsters vying for a R1-million purse.
The ante-post favourite here is Tenango at 1.40, with Mia Moo, I Am Giant and Buffalo Storm Cody jointly on offer at 2.00.
The Douglas Whyte Thekwini Stakes (Race 4) honours the famous Durbanite who ruled the Hong Kong jockey championship for more than a decade and who now runs a successful training yard in the racing-mad enclave.
Interestingly, the hot-pot favourite here is an uncommon raider from the Eastern Cape, Alan Greef-trained Golden Palm (1.05) to be ridden by champion jockey Richard Fourie.
The filly goes for a fourth win in a row, within five months, and offers a potential banker for punters to kick off their assault on the R10-million Pick 6.
