Hard hitters in the punting stakes

Ricky Sin is the best, he will lay you anything you want and always will give you the best price. Punter can be big or small he treat all his customers the same.

After hearing my good friend Pat passed on last night I would like to share this story. Pat was 1 of the biggest players in Randburg mostly of cash bets. He was the only person I knew that had his own safe at the old Ricky Sins place at the Piazza. Once he caught a straight line P6 100 times and collected over 100k. The P6 was tipped to him by a guy named Titch I'm not sure if its the same Titch on this forum. RIP my friend.

Gummit Titch wants to know was he in the building trade and his wife a caterer

mister a Wrote:

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> Gummit Titch wants to know was he in the building
> trade and his wife a caterer


He was into contruction, but he was divorced his wife was a doctor.

Gummit Wrote:

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> He was into contruction, but he was divorced his
> wife was a doctor.

RIP my good friend......

Remember Sage Throne first run in Durban paid my years stabling fees.

What ever happened to Henry Mansell? Think he landed millions on Horse Chestnut and from what I heard was the biggest punter and bookie in SA at the time.

As far as the "latter" day punters go, PE lay claim to some GIANTS...the late Arthur Servides was probably the biggest punter in a few decades and there are still one or two from PE that can really fire...

And fearless walter wigan?

Saksy Wrote:

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> What ever happened to Henry Mansell? Think he
> landed millions on Horse Chestnut and from what I
> heard was the biggest punter and bookie in SA at
> the time.

Remember henry had a horse with mdk , it had one eye, on its
Comeback run they backed it from 7/1 into 6/10, it won easy

Ascot Bulawayo - there was this guy called Jimmy Hollyhead, a big punter for Bulawayo. He used to shout and make big noises in the grandstand. When he saw the horse he had backed was cruising-in he would shout to the jockey from the grandstand " Moore,... slow down and give the others a chance".

I was a student in BFN ( 980) when I saw the following scenario took place in BFN invoving the Late Pieter Miller
he entered a horse in a 1600m but this horse was a sprinter, the name asccapes me but I remeber it was something with "Lucky " in his name
he came out of the ring after the horses went down, those days there were still a fair a mount of bookmakers in Bloem and racing was on a Saturday, the horse was like 14/1 so he walked up to the bookmakers ring stood in the middle and point to all of them and shouted to them all at the same time to lay him R2000 on the horse, I think there was 6 bookies at the time so he took that paid them cash and as they shortened he hit them again for another R2000 each on at about 8 or 6/1 by that time all the on course punters climb in and the horse shortened to fav like 12/10 or so..

when the gates opened the horse went like the clappers as they hit the straight this horse was about 30 lengths clear as the other jocks thought he was going to stop, him being a sprinter, and o yes PM had another horse in the races and they all thought this is the pacemaker, and they were unaware of the coup because they were at the start, they suddenly released that this horse was not going to stop, half way down the straight the horse start to shorten stride but still well clear but the last 50m it was out on its feet hanging on to win by half length.

this was the first real coup I saw with my own eyes
Pietre Miller was a very big punter in the Bloem days and apparently pulled of many a coup.

One of the the biggest coups that was ever pulled in Bloem involved Bertie van der Merwe and a horse called Beat the Sleek, this was so big it made headlines in the newspapers.
Bertie got this horse for free from a PE trainer, if I am not mistaken it might have been Barry Steenkamp, but I might be mistaken, this horse won one race in CT and one race in PE over 2000m, all Bertie had to do was pay the transport fees, the thing is he did not know he was getting the horse, when he woke up one morning the horse was in his paddock, arriving through the night, so he had to call the transporter to find out who send the horse).
he offered the horse to a lot of people and all they had to pay was the transport but could not get any takers so he paid it and kept the horse a 5 year old mare.
so he start to work the horse keeping in mind that this horse is a stayer, but one day this horse worked against a top sprinter Bertie had in his stable and Beat the Sleek (BTS) beat that horse over a sprint, he thought that it was a fluke so he tried it again and again she beat him even further, he even had Paul Whitmore riding it and he also confirmed that the horse can sprint.
So now they are planning a coup on this horse, they wanted to enter in KMB over 1200m but could not get good draws, eventually a 1200m race for F&m at Bloem came up and the coup was on.
Bertie had a client with the surname of Kirste, was well know in those days, so Bertie had no money to punt the horse so Kirsten said what ever he won he would split 50/50 with Bertie, plus a few other big punters got on.

The horse opened up at 33/1 and as soon as the horses went down the action started, I was listening on the insemination line and it went from 33's 25's 18- 16 -12 -8-6 and eventually I think it started at 33/10.
in the beginning of the commentary you never hear BTS name but all of a sudden you just heard BEAT- THE- SLEEK is finishing like a steam train ( Smiley was the commentator, I think, I still get goose bumps when I think of it)
won going away and she actually won 5 races in a row over 1200m and most of the times she was ridden by Paul Whitmore
The coup was huge I know Kirsen took about R300 000 from the bookies and I am not sure about the guys in the stables how much they took and I believe PW also collected a bit through friends that was on
myself f I also took a lot, I got on 25's and 20's
had a good evening lost some the next day -

Great story James....................remember the Beat The Sleek 1st win & never gave it a chance over the sprint.(tu)