Three From Three: Keagan de Melo’s Perfect Day Back At Turffontein
Not so long ago, Keagan de Melo’s saddle was hanging in Hong Kong. The Durbanville-raised jockey, a graduate of the South African Jockey Academy’s 2009 apprentice intake, had built one of the most decorated careers in the local weighing room — more than 1,200 winners, close to 50 of them at black-type level, and the 2022/23 SA Jockeys’ Championship won on the back of 277 winners in a single season. When the chance came to test himself on the international stage, he took it, joining the Hong Kong ranks for a full season and picking up his first Group-race success there in 2024/25.
But the Hong Kong chapter came to an early close last November, and de Melo brought his tack back home. He didn’t take long to remind Highveld racegoers what they’d been missing — a winner on his first day back in December, and a fast-forming new partnership with owner Laurence Wernars that has already produced some of the season’s better headlines.
Saturday at Turffontein was the clearest proof yet of how well that comeback is going. De Melo opened his account in the fillies’ juvenile plate aboard Within Reach, added a second in the following juvenile event on Gotthetiger, and then rounded out the treble in the day’s feature, the Grade 3 TAB Sea Cottage Stakes, aboard Errol Fl Ynn — another for the Wernars colours, trained by Joe Soma.
Errol Fl Ynn’s was the story with the most weight behind it. The three-year-old had needed only one previous start to find the winner’s enclosure, an allowance-company success over the Standside 1,600m back in June, with de Melo in the plate both times. Stepping straight from that into stakes company over 1,800m — a track that climbs through the final turn and asks a serious question of a horse’s stamina — was no small leap, and the colt answered it in style.
- Race 3 — Within Reach (juvenile fillies)
- Race 4 — Gotthetiger (juvenile colts and geldings)
- Race 7 — Errol Fl Ynn, TAB Sea Cottage Stakes (Gr 3)
For a jockey who has already worn the SA champion’s crown, a treble is nothing new. But this one, built on a stable relationship he’s only just started forging back on home soil, said plenty about how quickly de Melo has settled back into the winning habit at one of the country’s oldest and most demanding tracks.
If you’re following today’s Turffontein card, the full racecard and form guide is at cfox.co.za/predictions.
