Africa-Press – Namibia. NAMIBIA’s top horses and jockeys will battle it out this weekend when the MTC Summer Cup takes place at Tsjaka about 40km outside Gobabis.
It will be the third event that MTC will stage in collaboration with the Namibia Horse Racing Association since coming on board as a sponsor in October last year.
Since then they have staged successful events in Okahandja and Rehoboth, and according to the president of the NHRA, Marthinus de Waal, they are once again expecting a successful event.
Whenever there is an MTC event our horse owners get very excited because they know there’s always better and bigger prize money involved,” he said. “It will be a memorable occasion, because one of our veteran members, Atanasius Katamelo was part of that club, so we are looking forward to this event.”
“This weekend we expect more than 120 horses to take part and I know everybody wants a piece of the cake. So the horses will be well trained, they will be fit and I know the competition will be very tough, so we are looking forward to an exciting event,” he added.
A total of 17 races will take place throughout the day with N$150 000 prize money up for grabs. De Waal said they had taken precautionary measures for Covid-19, while they were preparing for a big turnout.
“Because Covid is still in our midst, precautionary measures will be in place at the gate, we will have sanitizers and water and people must wear masks, but we will make sure that there is a lot of water at the event,” he said.
“We will see what we can do to control the crowd, but as everyone knows, when it comes to horse racing it is very difficult to control the crowd.
So we actually sought help from the police and the NDF to assist us on Saturday, because we know it will attract a lot of spectators and horse lovers.
A vet will also be present and there will be ambulances and medical assistance, while there will be beautiful cups and medals up for grabs,” he added.
The proceedings will start with a race meeting for the horse owners at 10h00, while the first race will get underway at 10h30. There will be numerous races throughout the day in four divisions – the Maiden, Graduation, D and A divisions.
Some of the horses that will be in action include Stoute Man, Chief Helmet, Life’s a Trip, No Name and Sufi Sama in the Maiden division; Diamond Jack, Mambo’s Express, Forged in Flames and Sitting Bull in the Graduation division; Time Master, Able Surprise, Chief Bnlack Horse and Days of Thunder in the D division; and Icon King, What a Lover, Starlile, Extreme Pain, Warrior Poet and Burindi in the A Division.
De Waal thanked MTC, saying they had helped to resuscitate the sport. “We want to thank MTC, because there was a time when we lost hope as horse owners and horse lovers, but when they came on board we saw that there is light at the end of this dark tunnel so thanks to MTC for making this possible for us.” Fikameni Mathias of MTC said horse racing in Namibia had grown a lot.
“This will be our third event and if you look at the magnitude of the event you will see that there has been a lot of growth. Horse racing is a big sport, it was already big before we entered, but MTC committed itself to supporting the dreams of Namibians in the horse racing fraternity from the horse owners to the jockeys,” he said.
“We call on horse lovers throughout Namibia to come and support the event and help grow this sport so that we can reach the stage where we are coming close to the Durban July type of events,” he said.
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