OFF THE RECORD #140
Seventeen Years Of Spring Challenge History
Saturday’s Joburg Spring Challenge and Joburg Spring Fillies & Mares Challenge over 1450m at Turffontein have become popular features of the opening weeks of the new season. The Grade 2 double-header was inaugurated in 2009 and has produced a host of high-class winners over the years.
The Fillies & Mares Challenge, in particular, has built a remarkable legacy. It has become a serious standard setter for fillies destined for the breeding paddocks, and its roll of honour contains a number of mares who went on to make their mark at stud. Both races were upgraded from Grade 3 to Grade 2 status in 2014.
The races are also renowned for close and exciting finishes, which is perhaps fitting given that they are the first major weight-for-age (plus penalties) features of the new season. For the established stars, it is an early chance to lay down a marker, while the younger runners get an opportunity to take on proven older opposition.
Let’s look first at the interesting statistics for The Joburg Spring Challenge.
The race has produced two stallions from its winners in Potala Palace (Singspiel), who won in 2014 and MK’s Pride (Willow Magic), successful in 2021.
The formidable Captain Al sired Captain Scott (Alec Laird), the winner of the first Spring Challenge in 2009, as well as Captain Aldo, who triumphed in 2018. Captain Al’s son William Longsword sired Back In Business, who won for Joe Soma in 2024.
The winningmost trainers in the Spring Challenge are Mike de Kock and Sean Tarry, with three victories apiece. De Kock saddled Gibraltar Blue (2011), Link Man (2012) and Mount Pleasant (2020), while Tarry had Trip To Heaven (2015), Wonderwall (2017) and Tin Pan Alley (2025). Gibraltar Blue is the only filly to have won the colts’ race in its 17-year history.
Querari sired back-to-back winners in Kangaroo Jack (2016) and Wonderwall (2017). The superb Maine Chance stallion is represented this year by Cosmic Speed and Choisaanada.
Interestingly, champion stallion Vercingetorix has yet to break the ice. He has three strong runners this year in Chronicle King (now scratched), Gladatorian and I’m A Fireball, and statisticians will probably argue that their chances are significantly enhanced simply by virtue of their sire’s current dominance of the stallion ranks.
The most successful jockeys in the Spring Challenge are Andrew Fortune and Warren Kennedy with two wins apiece. Keagan De Melo (Tin Pan Alley), MK Katjedi (Busstopinhounslow), Callan Murray (I’m A Fireball) and Muzi Yeni (Erik Du Bois) will be looking for their respective second wins this year.
No horse has managed to win the race twice, though Tin Pan Alley and Main Defender, who won in 2023, have chances of changing that statistic this year.
In the ranks of the fillies and mares, the Spring Challenge produced a star in Igugu (Galileo) who won the race as a three-year-old in 2010, and went on to win the then Vodacom Durban July in 2011 and the then Grade 1 J&B Met in 2012.
Another three-year-old star was Anything Goes (Var) who won five of seven starts, including the Grade 1 Thekwini Stakes as a two-year-old.
Welwitschia (Oasis Dream) won the Spring FM Challenge as a four-year-old in 2011, before going on to three Grade 1 second places and a win in the Grade 2 2013 Diadem Stakes. Significantly, as a broodmare she produced the champion filly, Desert Miracle, winner of the Grade 1 2023 Schweppes Majorca Stakes and the HSH Princess Charlene Empress Club Stakes in the same season.
Festival Of Fire (Kahal), the 2012 winner, produced Destiny Of Fire, who finished third last year and is in the line-up again this year. Her foal Glastonbury Fire (Hawwaam) was a R1-million two-year-old in 2025 who won his second career start handsomely earlier this year and has been rested since.
Feather Boa (Flower Alley) the 2023 winner, was sold and exported to the United States where she will continue her career as a broodmare.
Humdinger (What A Winter) followed her 2022 success with a win in the 2023 Grade 2 Tibouchina Stakes and a sensational defeat of Happy Chance and Double Grand Slam in the 2024 Grade 1 Garden Province Stakes.
Humdinger was sold on to Drakenstein Stud, where she’s had a lovely colt by One World, reported to be heading to the Bloodstock SA National Sale next year.
Gavin Lerena is the most successful jockey in the history of this contest, but he is on the injury list and Keagan De Melo (Whistle The Tune) is the only rider with a previous win, and a chance to get a second victory this year.
Mike de Kock has saddled six winners of the F&M Spring Challenge and, alongside his son Mathew, has bright prospects of making it seven successes this year. They send out the ante-post favourite Flower Island, who is incidentally a graduate of Wilgerbosdrift/Maurtitzfontein, the most successful breeders so far with three previous wins.
Mat de Kock said this week: “Flower Island is a big runner, she done very well during winter and is impressive in her work. She could fight it out off a handy weight, and her inside draw is a plus.”
