Racing · Grade 1 championship
The Champions Challenge.
The Highveld's defining weight-for-age championship for older horses — 2000m of Turffontein at the business end of the autumn.
The race.
The championship test for older horses.
The HKJC World Pool Premier’s Champions Challenge is South Africa’s flagship weight-for-age contest for horses three and up, run over 2000m at Turffontein on Champions Day in late April. It is the race that separates the season’s best older milers and middle-distance horses on level terms, with only the age allowance between them. Stamina, tactical speed, and a horse that handles the Highveld on the day it matters most.
Heritage
From the old Gosforth to the home of the Highveld championship.
The Champions Challenge has had as many names as venues. It evolved from the framework of autumn championship racing on the Reef, moved around the calendar and alternated between Turffontein and Gosforth Park before Gosforth Park closed to racing around the turn of the century. The race settled at Turffontein, ran for years as the President's Champions Challenge, and was renamed the Premier's Champions Challenge to reflect the office of the Premier of Gauteng. 4Racing took over the Champions Day meeting and lifted the stakes; the Hong Kong Jockey Club's World Pool then came in as title sponsor, adding international commingled wagering to the South African autumn.
Turffontein racecourseThe race at a glance.
Grade 1 · 2000m · Weight For Age · Turffontein · late April.
Grade and distance
Run on Turffontein's Standside over 2000m. Weight For Age, open to three-year-olds and up, all sexes.
Turffontein's autumn climax
The feature race on 4Racing's autumn Champions Day — the final major programme of the Highveld's domestic season.
HKJC World Pool
Title-sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club's World Pool, which takes the race into global commingled wagering pools.
The older-horse championship
On Champions Day the Challenge shares the card with the Allied Steelrode Charity Mile and the Wilgerbosdrift Caradoc Gold Cup — the autumn's three defining older-horse tests, all on one card.
Notable Champions Challenge winners.
Four champions who announced themselves here.
Legal Eagle
By Greys Inn; trained by Sean Tarry. His April win headlined the campaign that earned him the Equus Award for SA Horse Of The Year.
Hawwaam
By Silvano; trained by Mike de Kock for Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum. The first of two straight Champions Challenge wins — champion SA three-year-old colt.
Hawwaam (again)
Back-to-back. A 3½-length repeat under Craig Zackey that gave him an international rating of 120 and stamped him as SA's best of his generation.
Got The Greenlight
By Gimmethegreenlight; trained by Joey Soma, ridden by Muzi Yeni. A three-quarter-length win over Second Base; Soma went on to land the Durban July with him.
The test
2000m WFA at Turffontein — no hiding places.
Weight For Age strips the handicapper out of the equation: three-year-olds get their age allowance, older horses go in at level weights, and the best horse wins. The Turffontein 2000m is one of South Africa's fairest championship trips — long enough to punish a horse short of stamina, sharp enough to expose one that can't quicken off a pace. It lands in late April, at the tail of the domestic season, which is why so many winners here have gone on: Legal Eagle to Horse Of The Year, Hawwaam to an international rating in the 120s, Got The Greenlight to the Durban July. Win this one and you are, by definition, the best older horse in the country on the day.
Turffontein racecourseBe there
The Champions Challenge at Turffontein.
Hospitality, parade ring access and the full Champions Day programme. Book early — this is the Highveld's biggest autumn raceday.
Hospitality enquiries