What was your favourite july winner and why?

The most exiting July for me was when dynasty beat Yard arm. It was a great match race! Pity I was on Yard arm

My favourite July winner was Dancing Duel in 1993.

I won about R 350,000 - which was a huge amount of money back then. Interestingly, and because I had so much on the horse, I paid for the bet up front ( as I don't think the bookmaker believed I would be able to settle! ).

I collected my winnings plus my stake the following Friday as it took that long for all the winning take backs to be collected. I walked back to my office with two plastic Checkers bags stuffed with largely small denomination notes.

R350,000 is still a huge amount of money....

If memory serves me right, the first July winner I selected was Court Day in 1970 - I was 10 years old at the time and just blindly followed a jockey on anything he sat on - now here's a challenge for the Clan - who was that jock?

Unfortunately since then my selections more often than not fell by the way side (should have stuck with jocks?) and I managed to find only a few:Tecla Bluff, London News, Dynasty and Bold Silvano.

One year my wife and myself spent a few days before the July at Giant's Castle and on the morning that we drove down the N3 to Durbs, my wife started to notice numbers scribbled on some of the bridges over the highway. These days every bridge has sort of a official looking number glued/pasted to the structure, but in those days the policy seemed to be to scribble the numbers by hand using chalk or something like that - and the numbers did not seem to follow any specific pattern. Lo and behold in one of the earlier races on July Day, she managed to catch all the swingers, the exacta and the trifecta by boxing the numbers from the bridges (it was something like 13, 17 and 19 I think) and she collected almost R1500 for the 20 bucks she spent. And the feeling was just as good as collecting the R350,000 was for Garrick!

Sadly it did not work so well the next year:(

Frodo Wrote:

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> If memory serves me right, the first July winner I
> selected was Court Day in 1970 - I was 10 years
> old at the time and just blindly followed a jockey
> on anything he sat on - now here's a challenge for
> the Clan - who was that jock?

James Maree.

Got it at the first try - I guess that's why you are called Magic(tu)

My fave July winners was Flaming Rock and Bush Telegraph but I won quite a bit just out of matric on Big Charles ...no 9 which was the number the house where we lived at the time...had R10 on the horse and strangely my other win of note on a big race day was also on a horse named Charles...however this was in the Met when Charles Fortune won at 40/1...won way more than the money that I got for Big Charles!!!!

I was fortunate enough to punt 2 nice July winners,for big bucks in those times,namely Flaming Rock,and then a horse called Trademark.Hopefully Igugu will be added to the list this year.

hibernia Wrote:

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> oscar Wrote:
>

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>

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> > Over the Air for me..my first bet on the July as
> a
> > bookies runner..I counld not see him getting
> beat
> > on form
>
>
> I was 6 then can`t remember that 1 lolX(

so that makes you born in 1973, yet not long ago you told us that it was your 40th birthday. You obviously did not do addition and subtraction at school (have they any schools in Alloa) Maybe they only start teaching kids how to add after year three and by that time you had already left to become a bookie.

No one's mentioned Sea Cottage ... I was a kid at school then and didn't bet but the story of the shooting thrilled me (like a good horror story should) and his taking the bullet past the post next year was a STORY ... even if he did have to share with Jollify. Re backing the July winner, to be quite honest I never have ... I hesitate to say I fancy Igugu this year in case I put the mockers on her chances.

Mavourneen Wrote:

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> No one's mentioned Sea Cottage ... I was a kid at
> school then and didn't bet but the story of the
> shooting thrilled me (like a good horror story
> should) and his taking the bullet past the post
> next year was a STORY ... even if he did have to
> share with Jollify. Re backing the July winner, to
> be quite honest I never have ... I hesitate to say
> I fancy Igugu this year in case I put the mockers
> on her chances.

In these days I was backing Lester Piggott to win Derbys 67/68 Ribocco/Ribero

Aye, Scotia, we're all greyer this year than we were last year ... I see you also fancy Igugu so maybe I will take courage this time round and put a few rands on her. I might even go down to KZN in time for the July ... how difficult is it to get in at the last minute, anyone know? I won't know if I can go until a couple of days before. I have to be in KZN for the 5th so maybe I'll go a little earlier, see if I can get to Greyville on THE DAY.