BLOODSTOCK South Africa graduates made it a clean sweep when filling the first three placings in Saturday’s G1 Premier’s Champions Challenge at Turffontein on Champions Day.

BSA grad Deo Juvente caused a 25-1 shock when downing last year’s winning and reigning Horse Of The Year Legal Eagle with recent G1 HSH Princess Charlene Of Monaco Empress Club Stakes winner Nother Russia finishing back in third in Saturday’s R4 million race to provide BSA graduates a clean sweep in one of Africa’s richest races.

Both Deo Juvente and Legal Eagle are owned by Mayfair Speculators, who spent R500 000 to acquire Deo Juvente and R425 000 to purchase Legal Eagle at the 2013 Emperors Palace National Yearling Sale.

A sixth G1 winner for last season’s Champion Sire Trippi, Deo Juvente is the first Grade One winner produced by former Equus Champion Circle Of Life, whose 10 career wins included the G1 Garden Province Stakes and one of Zimbabwe’s principal races, the Castle Tankard.

The five-year-old’s victory was a bitter-sweet one for his trainer Geoff Woodruff, who had sadly lost his mother the night before.

However, it was not a win out of turn for the five-year-old son of Trippi, whose past victories included the G2 Victory Moon Stakes, with Deo Juvente also having previously finished second to stable mate Master Sabina in the 2015 G1 Sansui Summer Cup.

Bred by the Northfields Stud, South Africa’s latest G1 winner has now or placed in of his 21 outings with Saturday’s G1 win pushing his earnings to R3 557 050 in the process.

Deo Juvente was one of three G1 winners on the card for riding sensation Callan Murray, with that Avontuur sponsored rider also booting home Mustaaqeem and Rafeef to wins in the G1 SA Nursery and G1 Computaform Sprint respectively.

The past weekend proved one to remember for BSA graduates, whose victories also include the G3 Gold Bowl (Hermoso Mundo) and G2 Drill Hall Stakes (Marinaresco).

Both Hermoso Mundo and Marinaresco were bred by Mauritzfontein!