ANDREW HARRISON

SOME fascinating match-ups add loads of spice to the second day of the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate Racing Festival at Kenilworth tomorrow.

Between Covid 19 and AHS, South African horse racing walks a tightrope of lockdowns and jockeys, trainers and their owners have had to use a crystal ball to plan campaigns. With the Western Cape offering boosted prize money for their season, but more pertinently, important Black Type features like tomorrow’s Gr1 L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate and the Gr1 Cartier Paddock Stakes, it was always going to be a lure for the top horses.

A small but quality field is due to line up in the Queen’s Plate with Rainbow Bridge looking to turn the tables on Belgarion with the front-running Cirillo there to once again keep the field honest and former winner Do It Again looking to regain his best form.

Belgarion is unbeaten since Justin Snaith and owners Gillian and Alec Foster decided to geld the son of Dynasty and although his paddock value was terminated, it was the correct decision as far as the racecourse was concerned.

Belgarion is in line for his seventh straight success since stepping out two-stones lighter, races that included the Vodacom Durban July but more importantly, the recent Green Point Stakes.

He was the best weighted horse in the July as Snaith did a masterful job of getting his charge into the race on favourable weight terms so his win was hardly surprising. More importantly, in the Green Point he met Rainbow Bridge at level weights but still disposed of him in emphatic fashion.

Rainbow Bridge was handy for most of the race as he gave his new pilot, apprentice Luke Ferraris an arm-stretch, while Richard Fourie had Belgarion settled at the tail of the field.

Once Fourie released the handbrake, Belgarion strode past in majestic fashion, leaving no doubt that he is primed for tomorrow afternoon.

The ever game Cirillo made most of the running and while having no answers to Belgarion’s finishing burst, he fought a titanic battle with Rainbow Bridge with the latter edging him out on the line.

Cirillo ran his heart out in his usual fashion but there is a question mark over Rainbow Bridge. Eric Sands will no doubt have left some meat on the bone for tomorrow’s race and what was encouraging is that Rainbow Bridge looked dead-and-buried a furlong out but came back at Cirillo.

Whether he can make the necessary improvement, only the race will tell but given the ease of Belgarion’s victory he has the wood on both rivals.

Former winner Do It Again missed his intended warm-up in the Green Point and with his current form having tailed off, he could prove a better proposition in the Met.

As a mouth-watering appetiser to the Queen’s Plate, Horse of the Year Summer Pudding puts her unbeaten nine-race winning streak on the line in the Gr1 Cartier Paddock Stakes.

Trainer Paul Peter and owners Jess and Stephen Jell could well have taken the safer route and left Summer Pudding with the easier pickings of the Highveld autumn season but they showed in electing to make the trip to Durban for the Woolavington 2000 after a testing Tripe Tiara campaign that they have a filly of rare talent and they are not keeping her wrapped in cotton wool.

With the Paddock Stakes and a likely tilt at the Met on the agenda, Summer Pudding will be fully tested, no more so in her clash with the highly rated Mike de Kock mare Queen Supreme. The Irish import appears to have some temperament issues but on her day is supremely good.

Like Summer Pudding, she makes her Cape Town debut, but as she races in the same silks as Summer Pudding the connections are covered either way.

It is seldom that the local contingent play second fiddle in the market to raiders but Candice Bass-Robinson has not been shy to pit Clouds Unfold against the best males around, taking them on in the Gold Challenge and the recent Green Point Stakes. Just how Summer Pudding and Queen Supreme fare against Clouds Unfold should give us an indication as to just how good the two Highveld raiders are.