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Goat gives much joy with Oaks win

Published by charl on June 27, 2009

THERE are racing purists who have objected against horses being called “Goat”, “Mule”, “Donkey” and “Chicken” - all incidentally trained at Summerveld by Paul Lafferty, but Goat for one doesn’t know her name. She scored an impressive Grade 2 win under Piere Strydom in Saturday’s Gold Circle Oaks over 2400m at Clairwood Park.

The one-time Durban July hopeful turned in a below-par performance in the Woolavington Stakes which cost her a place in the big one, but perhaps that was for the good and Lafferty told racingweb.co.za: “We took it on the chin. The Woolavington pace was very slow and she raced on a dead patch of the track that day.”

Goat, by Labeeb from Hello Dolly, was bred by Vanessa Williams’ Keivan Stud and is owned by the always jovial partnership of Cliff Lines, Trevor Fourie from Fourie’s Sporting Club, Neil Loudon, Glen Jonas, Clive Napier, Phil Georgiou, Derek Martin and Gary Fourie.

Lafferty has trained many Grade 2 and Grade 3 winner and perhaps Goat is the one who can break the Grade 1 ice for the affable trainer, whose column “Just For A Laff”, resumes with a new edition sponsored by Interbet later this weekend.