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by Gary Lemke
By This Time Next Week Candice Bass-Robinson Might Well Have Become the Next Trainer To Have Hit 100 Winners for the Season
The Milnerton-based trainer, whose stable is sponsored by GG Gaming, sends out a number of fancied runners at Fairview on Friday and she also has decent chances at Kenilworth on Saturday.
Getting to 100 winners for the season will be a source of great pride for Candice Bass-Robinson. It will be the first time it’s happened since she became head trainer at the powerful stable, after taking over from her father Mike, and yet another feather in the cap for the dedicated trainer.
Despite last season being ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, when racing shut down for just over 60 days, she has had a far better season in 2020/21 and has more than doubles last season’s return, when she had 49 winners.
“I’m proud about getting to 100 winners which would be a career milestone for me,” she said. “What I’m also proud about is the percentage of winners (over 12%) which is quite a significant increase on last season (8.1%).”
Candice Bass-Robinson has sent out winners at four different race tracks this season, which ends on 31 July with the Champions Cup meeting at Greyville. She has unsaddled winners at Kenilworth, Durban, Fairview and Greyville, the site of her sole Grade One success with the 75-1 outsider ZARINA in the Garden Province Stakes.
“Last season I had two Grade One winners but this year has been more successful,” she said. “My younger horses, in particular, have performed well and I’m excited for the next season when some of my two-year-olds turn three. I have some talented sorts coming through.”
In 2017 Candice Bass-Robinson made history when she became the first woman trainer to win the country’s premier event, the Vodacom Durban July, with MARINARESCO. And, as fate would have it, she also trains the full sister to MARINARESCO, MARINA, who has won five races for the stable this season.
“Yes, she’s a super filly,” Candice Bass-Robinson confirmed. “She has raced 10 times this season and has won five races and I think that had I run her in all three legs of the Winter Series against the fillies she might have won them all.”
MARINA won two legs, over 1800m and 2400m and finished third, beaten less than a length, in the opening leg against the colt and geldings over 1600m.
This weekend Candice Bass-Robinson should add to her winners, first by raiding Fairview on Friday and then back to the more familiar, albeit soggy, surroundings of Kenilworth on Saturday.
She sends out five runners at Fairview, with four of them having winning chances with GRAYSWOOD PINK, LA BANQUIERE, TENACITY and Marmalisa. On Saturday at Kenilworth, SKY GOD looks to be the stable’s best bet on the card.