Sail South will take on Marinaresco in the Green Point Stakes early next month after powering home like a tornado in the NRC Charity Plate at Kenilworth on Saturday.

Richard Fourie, who is quickly building up a rewarding association with Brett Crawford’s big stable, swept his mount to the front over a furlong out and the 9-2 chance drew right away to slam Baritone by three and a half lengths.

Sail South (Liesl King)

“It’s going to be a hard season for Sail South off 110 but he now has to take his chance against the top horses,” said

Crawford. “He runs in the Green Point next and then maybe we will consider the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate.”

Justin Snaith, although pleased with Baritone, blamed himself for 14-10 favourite Black Arthur managing only fifth (“He looked rusty. Good horse – bad trainer. It was shocking”). But maybe the self-flagellation was unwarranted. After all, this was the horse’s first run since the July and he is still a colt.

However it was the end of the road for third-placed Blarney Bay even though he seemed to be enjoying his customary gallop-them-into-the-ground tactics as much as ever. “He is eight and, with the summer course coming up, it’s time to call it a day but at least he went out the way I wanted,” said Mike Robinson who put himself on the map by improving the horse out of all recognition soon after taking him over.

Crawford also has a string of big race targets for the Corne Orffer-partnered Beach Goddess who really exerted her authority in the closing stages of the Laisserfaire to beat 1.5kg-conceding stable companion Chevauchee by three-parts of a length. “Laisserfaire was a brilliant filly who I trained,” he recalled. “Beach Goddess will stick to fillies sprints like the Southern Cross (Dec 10) and Sceptre (Jan 6) for now while, as I have said before, Chevauchee, now goes back round the turn.”

Beach Goddess (Liesl King)

Loading for this race proved a starter’s nightmare – it took almost six minutes with more and more of the 13 runners playing up – and the longer it went on the more upset the horses (and their trainers) became but the legendary Ralph Rixon and his wife Val have lived with this sort of thing for over 60 years and they were understandably thrilled with Our Destiny’s third place.

So too was Dean Kannemeyer with the Diadem-targeted Real Princess’s second to Search Party (yes, Crawford again!) in the last while the Milnerton trainer explained that he had reason to believe that Cape Speed’s performance when runner-up to Kilrain under top weight in the Swartz Family Handicap heralds a return to the winner’s box. “He was so fat that this will have taken 50lb off his gut,” said Kannemeyer who has his eye on the new version of the J & B Stayers.

Candice Bass-Robinson is aiming Kilrain at the Peninsula Handicap on January 7. This horse was sold for R1.4 million as a yearling but, when breeder Robin Hamilton later bought him back for R200 000, Robert Bloomberg shrewdly stepped in to take a quarter share.

Owner-breeder Paul Zeeman, who has just had an operation in Cape Town’s Panorama Hospital for heart and shoulder problems, had the sort of tonic that no doctor can match when Nutbush Citilimits got up on the line for Harold Crawford and Ossie Noach at 22-1 in the Elite Fibre Maiden.

By Michael Clower