Achieving the L’Ormarins King’s Plate – Cape Town Met double, whichever way around, is no easy task, whether in the same season or not.
But the weight-for-age ‘royal mile’ remains an important prep race for the R5 million World Sports Betting Gr1 Cape Town Met, which will be run over 2000m at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth on Saturday.
Race 8 gets underway at 16h05.
Unfortunately, Khaya Stables’ dual Grade 1 winner Green With Envy was withdrawn by trainer Dean Kannemeyer last Thursday and that’s a big disappointment as Larry’s rule in racing states that ‘Gr1 winners win Gr1 races’. So that leaves all of Al Muthana, Oriental Charm, Atticus Finch and See It Again to support the racing homely.
Royal Aussie – nice prep on 4 January – could be a quartet kicker (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
The darling of South African racing is without any doubt the Gr1 L’Ormarins King’s Plate, run over 1600m as a tradition about three weeks in advance of the WSB Cape Town Met.
Both these races are tun at weight-for-age and the King’s Plate mile is accepted as the perfect pointer to the 2000m contest, if you stay that is.
A hidden gem in the punters’ arsenal is found at: Gallop TV Fixtures
All the days runners can be found by clicking on the little chart icon:
This link will take racing fans to a hidden world of data and “sectional timing”.
Take a breath and give yourself a moment to absorb everything you could ever want to know about what happened in a race!
Click here – Sectional timing data
There is a lot going on, but the trick of course is to focus on what makes sense to you.
The L’Ormarins King’s Plate was won in file style by sensational 3yo colt, One Stripe.
The extract below shows that One Stripe, Royal Aussie and Lucky Lad dawdled the first half (1st 1/2) in 51.04, 51.27 and 52.19 against an average of 50.8 seconds.
The quicker One Stripe and Lucky Lad (Gr1 sprinter) then powered home in 46.59 secs and 46.41 secs vs an average of 48.14 secs. They raced the second half 9% and 12% faster than the first.
It’s easy to see how handy runners are unable to finish as fast in green column, as Montien, Gimme A Prince, Snow Pilot and Oriental Charm show very clearly.
Green column shows who went faster in the 2nd-½
Position map shows where they were and how they travelled
One Stripe, Royal Aussie and Lucky Lad ran on.
Most indicators tell the story that the mile played out for horses who could quicken after a pace that had been set by fast travelling Montien and Snow Pilot.
The implication then is that Royal Aussie and Oriental Charm are the 2000m horses that found the L’Ormarins King’s Plate the ‘prep’ that it used to be.
Oriental Charm’s sectional timing form shows that once rolling in front, he is a hard horse to beat. But this time he tried to pace it out with quick horses too short of his best and his nearly 49 seconds couldn’t handle (avg) 48’s that was being dished out in the second half.
Extract compares how Oriental Charm dominates usually to win
All this from One Stripe’s 97.62 second mile 3 weeks before, and we have only scratched the surface!
Sectional Timing information is available here.
