Africa’s Greatest  Horseracing Event, the Vodacom Durban July, to be run at Greyville Racecourse on Saturday, 31 July 2010, is shaping up to be one of the strongest renewals of the big race in many a year with top class sorts promising to represent everyone of the categories of older horses, three-year-olds and fillies.

The Mike Bass yard can now boast that the full siblings Pocket Power and River Jetez are both J&B Met winners and joining them as a July candidate will be the ever improving four-year-old Fort Vogue.

Pocket Power’s presence in the July is not going to have as big an influence on the weights as it did last year as he has come down from a 121 merit rating to a 117.

Bass might still want to keep him in though to give Fort Vogue and River Jetez the best possible chance of being favourably weighted against the three-year-olds colts, who can carry a maximum of 55kg in the race. 

River Jetez’s current merit rating, despite having won the Met, is 104 as opposed to the 108 she was off for last year’s July.

If Pocket Power takes his place, she will at this stage carry the same 51,5kg she carried last year.

Fort Vogue, off 106, would have to carry 52,5kg, which is 1,5kg more than the yard’s best placed horse last year, Thundering Jet.

However, he has the look of being the latest in a long line of four-year-olds trained by the masterful Bass who will arrive at the July lean and mean and a different kettle of fish to what he was at any other stage of his career.

Mother Russia trained by the equally masterful Mike de Kock is also currently rated 106.

De Kock has been very critical of the successful merit rating appeal for Fort Vogue and the consequent adjustments to some of the other Met-placed horses including his own Mother Russia.

He reckoned that anywhere else in the world Mother Russia would be rated about 115.

This gives an indication of just how tough a task Pocket Power will face in this year’s July.

De Kock has said of Mother Russia, “People just don’t know how good this filly is”. It also won’t be forgotten by July punters that she jumped from stall 18 of 18 in the Met.

Fabiani off a current 108 will have to face all of his Met conquerors, with the exception of Pocket Power, on worse terms.

However, the Glen Kotzen yard appeared to be going through a slightly flat period at the time.

The dynamic young trainer is sure to have made some changes since and evidence of this was that both his Cape and KwaZulu-Natal yards bounced back to form last weekend.

Big City Life looked exceptional in the parade ring before last year’s July and it will be interesting to see whether he thrives again upon return to Durban.

He finished only 3,6 lengths back in the Met, despite his Grade 1 penalty, and there was then a gaping gap of nearly five lengths back to the next horse, Forest Path, whom he had beaten by only two lengths in the slow run July.

Big City Life’s merit rating of 111 won’t make it easy for him, but he shouldn’t be written off yet.

There are some exciting three-year-olds in the country at the moment and the three best rated at this stage Bravura, Noordhoek Flyer and Pierre Jourdan are all likely to stay the July trip. The bad news for them was that Pierre Jourdan was awarded a merit rating of 109 after his Gauteng Guineas win.

This means Bravura is unlikely to stay on his merit rating of 107 if he is to repeat Big City Life’s feat of winning the Investec Cape Derby and the Daily News 2000 as he will likely face Pierre Jourdan in the latter event.

Bravura is a most exciting horse, unbeaten in five starts, and has shown most of the credentials necessary for a champion including early pace, the ability to be switched off at will by the jockey, the ability to quicken when asked, even when in the front, and he also has the courage to come out ahead in a fight.

The legendary jockey and now trainer, Michael Roberts, however, favours Noordhoek Flyer to turn the tables on Bravura in the July and stamped him as a Greyville type of a horse.

Bravura, on the other hand, as a rangy galloping type will have to prove his suitability to the tight Greyville circuit.

Noordhoek Flyer is currently rated 106.

Pierre Jourdan’s 109 rating appears to have been arrived at by the use of a line horse and the computer,for despite his comfortable win in the Gauteng Guineas, he has not impressed as much as Bravura or Noordoek Flyer. 

As it currently stands none of these three will be under sufferance in the July, unlike Big City Life who was 1,5kg under sufferance last year.

The early Racegoer barometer fancies Bravura to storm through the Champions Season and on to Vodacom Durban July glory, although that current too high merit rating of Pierre Jourdan’s together with the too low merit ratings of Mother Russia, River Jetez and Fort Vogue will probably ask him to be the best three-year-old since Dynasty.

The Racegoer rates Mother Russia as the most likely older horse to pick up the pieces if Bravura can’t do it.

There is another horse who remains an unknown quantity for the Champions Season, the Alyson Wright-trained Jet Command. Although probably not a July candidate, he is the most impressive three-year-old the Racegoer has seen in KwaZulu-Natal to date.

The yard will be testing his ability to stay a mile in his next start and his performance there will decide his route for the winter.