Saturday’s nine-race Standside meeting at Turffontein offers punters a card loaded with betting angles, not least a trio of last-start winners ideally placed to follow up. Two hail from the powerful Sean Tarry stable, whose exciting juveniles Within Reach and Prayersandpromises make for a potential early double after encouraging recent maiden victories.
Within Reach made an eye-catching introduction when scoring over 1450m on the Inside track a little over a fortnight ago. Despite losing ground at the start, she travelled like a filly with above-average ability under Keagan de Melo before asserting late, suggesting there was more in reserve than the margin indicated.
The move to the Standside course with its testing 600m run-in should play further to her strengths in Race 1 over 1400m, and the daughter of Malmoos sets a solid standard.
Familiar rivals Moana and Doesyourmotherknow, second and third behind her that day, meet the winner on 3kg better terms, tightening the equation. That weight swing makes the trio tricky to split entirely, so Exacta and Trifecta players would do well to keep the trio firmly in the mix.
Stablemate Prayersandpromises goes in Race 2, also over 1400m, and this son of Gimmethegreenlight looks another with a clear upside. He was well supported on debut and ran with promise despite greenness probably costing him a first-up score.
With that experience under his belt, he improved markedly second time out when only getting the hang of things late over 1160m, while still looking far from the finished article under Ryan Munger.
On that evidence, the step up to 1400m looks tailor-made for Tarry’s charge whose progress it should pay to follow. Later on the card, another progressive type likely to extend a winning sequence is Precocious, a Tony Peter-trained three-year-old filly who has thrived since relocating to the Highveld late last year.
The daughter of Ideal World has been a revelation for her new stable, rattling off four wins from four starts. Promising apprentice Blaine Marx-Jacobson has partnered her to three of those victories and retains the ride aboard the filly in Race 8 over this sharp 1000m.
Her latest success, an emphatic course-and-distance win off a career-high mark, suggested she still has more to offer.
With Tarry’s progressive juveniles setting the tone early and Peter’s flying filly primed to strike late, Saturday’s Turffontein programme presents punters with a meeting where stable momentum and progressive form could prove decisive, and where backing the right last-start winners might once again be the key to unlocking the card.
Clive Robinson
