The 2022 Hollywoodbets Durban July is certain to be an enormous celebration – with an enormous crowd allowed again into Greyville racecourse after lockdown and the racing sport again onto its ft after a near-death expertise.
And if three-year-old Safe Passage wins the nation’s most well-known horse race, pleasure ranges will probably be cranked up a number of notches additional. Not solely is famous coach Mike de Kock’s gelding the favorite within the betting market, however he will probably be ridden by the most well-liked jockey within the nation.
Muzi Yeni is a agency favorite amongst punters – a charismatic character with unusual expertise on horseback. The cliché about dynamite and small packages is commonly used when individuals speak about this man. Yeni is small, even for a jockey, and has no battle preserving his using weight all the way down to 52kg.
This permits him to experience all runners, massively boosting his profitable probabilities. He has capitalised on this benefit in no unsure phrases, racking up practically 2 000 wins on tracks across the nation since first swinging into the racing irons within the early 2000s. He has gained many Grade 1 races and are available near the nationwide jockey championship on a few events.
He was 10 instances Northern Cape champion rider, ruling the roost on the Kimberley sand till Covid stopped racing in its tracks.
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Fierce willpower, ferocious competitiveness and a relentless work ethic have been Yeni’s hallmarks. His dimension may be at the foundation of all this.
As a child, his top had each “clever Dick” round asking if he was already a jockey.
Ridicule in regards to the vertical problem solid a combating spirit: “I used to stand up to those who picked on me and I got into a lot of fights as a kid.”
The son of a truck driver, Yeni was born and bred in Durban’s Claremont township and attended Pinetown Junior School and Hunt Road Secondary earlier than taking the trace – and his father’s recommendation – and enrolling at the SA Jockey Academy at Summerveld. He’d by no means sat on a horse earlier than he obtained to the academy at age 15.
“I’d seen these small people riding big horses and I thought, ‘I can do that’,” he informed me.
His dimension and bubbly persona will get Yeni seen – and one of many first to take an curiosity within the teenager was Natie Kotzen, then an assistant to De Kock, a coach in his pomp making a world title for himself.
On solely his twelfth experience as a brand new apprentice jockey, Yeni obtained his first win – on De Kock Storm King at the outdated Clairwood racecourse. Could the story come full circle as we speak as De Kock offers the little fella a leg up on Safe Passage? Punters and bookmakers reckon so pinning the Gaynor Rupert-owned horse to the highest of the betting boards at 4-1.
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After profitable the latest Daily News 2000 on Safe Passage, Yeni commented that the son of Silvano “gave me goosebumps”, so electrifying was his flip of foot. De Kock has described the gelding as “a proper racehorse” and a “real athlete”.
They ought to know.
Yeni landed his first Grade 1 victory within the 2011 Champion’s Challenge at Turffontein – on a horse referred to as Happy Landing, for coach Joey Soma. In 2021, he guided the tremendous filly War of Athena to a Triple Tiara.
In the previous month, he added two Grade 1s to the gathering. He at present lies fifth on the jockey’s log, with 145 wins over 11 months, however has not made a concerted assault on the championship this season – not like in 2018/19 when he labored at it like a demon, however fell simply three wins wanting Lyle Hewitson.
He has wanted a break from that relentless work and journey – to spend extra time with companion Kim and daughters, and to preserve power for massive races like as we speak’s. A victory would make Yeni solely the second black jockey, after pal S’Manga Khumalo, to win Africa’s best race.
The Greyville grandstand roof would rattle.
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