It's Pierre Strydom's historic day

A bog-standard Thursday fixture at the Vaal might seem an unlikely setting for six-time champion jockey Pierre "Striker" Strydom to bid farewell to the game he has graced for four decades.

- Mike Moon

However, the modest venue on the banks of the river is his favourite racecourse in South Africa and — for all his many big-race glories — it is workaday, bread-and-butter fare that has filled his bag of more than 5600 career wins.

One of the cardinal rules of effective gambling is to keep emotion strictly out of the equation. That'll be impossible in this situation. Only the perverse and mean-spirited won't be hoping the great man signs off with a winner, or two, three...