Racing · Grade 1 championship
The Champions Challenge.
The Highveld's defining weight-for-age championship over 2000m of the TAB Turffontein standside track.
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 aged three and over, run over 2000m at TAB Turffontein on Champions Day in late April. It is the race that separates the season’s best older milers and middle-distance horses at weight-for-age terms. Stamina, tactical speed, and a horse that handles the Highveld on the day it matters most.
Heritage
From the old Gosforth Park 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 TAB Turffontein and Gosforth Park before Gosforth Park closed to racing around the turn of the century. The race settled at TAB 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.
TAB Turffontein racecourseThe race at a glance.
Grade 1 · 2000m · Weight For Age · TAB Turffontein · late April.
Grade and distance
Run on TAB Turffontein's Standside over 2000m. Weight For Age, open to three-year-olds and up, all sexes.
TAB Turffontein's autumn climax
One of three Grade 1 feature races on Champions Day — the third leg of The Championships.
HKJC World Pool
Title-sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club's World Pool, which takes the race into global commingled wagering pools.
The weight-for-age championship
On Champions Day the Champions Challenge shares the card with the Grade 1 Empress Club Stakes and the Grade 1 Computaform Sprint as well as the final legs of the Triple Crown and Triple Tiara.
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 TAB 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 TAB 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.
TAB Turffontein racecourseBe there
The Champions Challenge at TAB Turffontein.
Hospitality, parade ring access and the full Champions Day programme. Book early — this is the Highveld's biggest autumn raceday.
Hospitality enquiries