Gimme A Nother just needed teeth fixed ahead of Breeders’ Cup

SA's star mare goes in the Breeders' Cup on Saturday. Millions of South African horse racing hearts will be galloping with Gimme A Nother on Saturday when she represents the country in the Breeders’ Cup in the US – the so-called World Championships of the game. Carrying the famous ‘Oppenheimer’ black and yellow silks for owners Jessica and Steven Jell, Gimme A Nother goes up against 13 international rivals in the $2-million Makers Mark Filly & Mare Turf (Grade 1) over a mile and a furlong and a half (about 1900m) at Keeneland in Kentucky. The off time is just after 9pm SA time. Latest news from Stateside is that the six-year-old mare worked on Sunday and did well. US racing site Daily Racing Form describes her as being “at the peak of her powers, unbeaten in three starts this year”. She is certainly in better nick than last year this time when she had to be scratched from the same race after injuring a splint bone in her prep. A couple of hiccups Gimme a Nother raced five times during her first Northern Hemisphere campaign, three times finishing second in Grade 2s, winning a Grade 2, but trailing in a distant seventh in her lone Grade 1 try, the New York Stakes, run over a Saratoga bog two Junes ago. American trainer Graham Motion wishes he’d scratched from the New York race. She had another hiccup before finding her best form again. Motion discovered and had to surgically remove two badly infected teeth. The dental setback delayed a comeback until June 13 his year, when she smartly won the Grade 3 Eatontown at Monmouth, followed by a game win in the Grade 2 Beverly D and then a Grade 1 victory at Woodbine. DRF quotes Motion as saying her improvement is partly due to the tooth fix and partly to becoming fully acclimatised to life in the Northern Hemisphere. Quarantine and preparation Motion has trained about 10 South African imports. The first wave – among them Beach Bomb and Isivunguvungu, who both made it to the Breeders’ Cup – flew from SA and had to quarantine for 60 days with no exercise at Newburgh Animal Import Centre in New York. When Gimme a Nother travelled – after seven races unbeaten locally for the Mike de Kock stable – she quarantined in SA, then flew to France and trained at Chantilly for 60 days before crossing the Atlantic. DRF says: “It all has added up to a second winning streak on a different continent than the first – and a start in the Breeders’ Cup.” Gimme A Nother was at 16-1 with the books on Monday, with betting for the Fillies & Mares Turf dominated by British and Irish raiders.