Quantum Theory is the choice in the Spring Spree.
When spring arrives, you’re likely to hear someone singing or humming Here’s Comes the Sun:
Little darlin’ / It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darlin’ / It feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, doo’n-do-do / Here comes the sun / And I say, ‘It’s all right’.
George Harrison’s melody and lyrics fit the mood of spring perfectly, which is why it’s the most downloaded and streamed of all The Beatles’ scores of great songs. Everyone wants a feelgood hymn on a playlist.
In South African racing, the sun comes in September and the Betway Spring Spree Stakes at Turffontein is greeted with an exhalation, “It’s all right.”
After a month of low-key, hard-scrabble competition, the turf is regenerating and getting ready for the big time once more. It all starts with the Spring Spree on Saturday, a Listed 1200m sprint around the Inside Track turn and up the straight.
The occasion demands a bit of quality and 4Racing has got that with a talented and evenly matched line-up of nine under the handicap.
The top weight, off a merit rating of 111, is Quantum Theory, who spent winter as a runner-up, recording four second places in a row in Pinnacle sprints before finally winning at the start of August.
The game six-year-old then changed hands and stables and steps out on Saturday under the new custodianship of former champion trainer Sean Tarry.
Quantum Theory will probably start as favourite, but is no banker bet. All of Chyavana, Night Bomber, Slinky Mapimpi, Cosmic Star and Espinoza are challengers.
The supporting feature is the Betway The Lady’s Stakes, a non-black type 1200m for fillies and mares.
Here the wintry-sounding Frozen Fantasy and Blizzard Snow are likely to be the principal choices in a seven-horse field.
The former has been campaigning at a high level but must concede a whole seven kilos to the latter, who is in hot form.
Here, too, the opposition looks feisty and the temptation will be to go wide in exotic bets.
Saturday might not quite be spring day, or the vernal equinox, but should offer a nice day out in the sun at the Big T and, with luck, profitable punting and a ditty to hum.
