Dennis Drier equaled a feat achieved by his famous Uncle Syd Laird on Saturday at Scottsville by winning the same Grade 1 race for the seventh time.
The exciting Twice Over colt Sand And Sea landed “Uncle Den” his seventh Gold Medallion, which is currently sponsored by Tsogo Sun. “Uncle Syd’s” seven-up was more celebrated as he did it in the Durban July and thereby set a record in the big race which still stands.
However, the most impressive part of Drier’s achievement is that of the eight renewals of the Gold Medallion this decade he has won six of them.
His first Medallion victory was way back in 1990 with Spook And Diesel and since then he has won it with Link Man (2010), Potent Power (2012), Captain Of All (2013), Guiness (2014), Seventh Plain (2015) and now Sand And Sea.
Of those horses, Captain Of All went on to win two further Grade 1s and Seventh Plain one. Captain Of All landed the Tsogo Sun Sprint and the Mercury Sprint as a four-year-old, having missed most of his three-year-old season. Seventh Plain won his next race, the Grade 1 Golden Horseshoe over 1400m at Greyville.
Sand And Sea could by all accounts go on to further Grade 1 success. He took awhile to find his stride on Saturday. This didn’t overly concern Anton Marcus, not surprisingly, as the rangy colt was travelling ominously well in behind the field. When he switched him out it was race over in a matter of strides as the colt’s big action saw him making up the ground easily to win going away by 2.25 lengths from Varallo and Al Mariachi.
He looks likely to go a mile this season.
Sand And Sea was bred by Drakenstein Stud and is owned by Bernard Kantor, Jack Mitchell, Marsh Shirtliff and Mayfair Speculators.
Markus Jooste, of Mayfair Speculators was the outright owner of Captain Of All, Guiness and Seventh Plain, while Anton Marcus rode all of those in the Medallion with the exception of Captain Of All.
