Brett Crawford’s Undercover Agent, well fancied for the Betting World Handicap at Kenilworth yesterday, stamped himself as a smart Cape Guineas candidate come the season with an emphatic victory – but so too, third-placed Hemmingway.

Undercover Agent hunted pacemaker Western Storm in the 1400m event but once Corne Orffer extracted him from the traffic the race was over in a matter of strides.

Aldo Domeyer

Aldo Domeyer aboard Hemmingway, tracked Undercover Agent throughout, but the son of Silvano took a little more time to find his stride and did well to snatch third behind a fast-finishing Triple Explosion. The Guineas trip looks ideal.

Crawford will have been well pleased with this showing after earlier upsetting the applecart with outsider One For One putting the skids under two well fancied debutantes November Storm and Sark. However, there was not much in it at the finish and both expensive yearling buys will be short-priced at their next starts.

Later Tap O’ Noth scribbled on his clean sheet when going down to the older Our Mate Art and Cot Campbell in the Play Soccer Graduation Plate, but as in the case of Hemmingway, there was cause for optimism. The year older Candice Bass-Robinson’s Australian-bred Our Mate Art had an exceptional record in last season’s Winter Series without winning but yesterday showed his versatility and stamping himself as a serious Cape Summer Season and Champions Season contender with a clinical demolition of two highly rated sophomores.

Effective from six furlongs and further, Our Mate Art was recording only his second victory in 11 starts but had earned in all but one. Cot Campbell finished his race off nicely in second and in spite of two prior victories, the penny still has to drop with Tap O’ Noth.

Mike Robinson’s Good Time Gal made short work of her opposition in the Interbet.co.za Pinnacle stakes in a superb performance under Bernard Fayd’Herbe. Apprentice Aksay Balloo was determined to make a race of it as he bulleted Mike Stewart’s It Is What It Is to the front off her light weight but Goodtime Gal, not far off the best of her generation that included Bela-Bela and Nightingale, proved far too classy and reeled in the pacemaker with ease.

By Andrew Harrison