David Thiselton
The Candice Dawson-trained Just Be Lekker booked herself a place in the Hollywoodbets Scottsville Festival Of Speed meeting with an emphatic victory in a MR 103 fillies and mares handicap over 1160m at Turffontein Standside on Saturday.
Her merit rating of 103 was raised to 109, which would have seen her carrying a nice galloping weight of 53,5kg under handicap conditions in the Gr 2 R1 million Golden Horsse Sprint if that had been the choice of race, but the connections look to have opted for a seemingly harder task in the Gr 1 R1 million SA Fillies Sprint, where she is under sufferance with seven of the other entries and 6,5kg under sufferance with the two highest rated entries Double Grand Slam and Rascova.
On the other hand she is on the up and could prove to be better than her 109 merit rating.
On Saturday Just Be Lekker was drawn five under Serino Moodley in a ten horse field and was carrying topweight of 60kg.
The visiting KZN jockey has been seen to ride some fine faces over that course and distance and he delivered again. The big four-year-old daughter of William Longsword was jostled slightly early and found herself in last position. However, Moodley did not panic and bided his time and sat behind a train of horses who were going down the middle inside of the course. She began to pick them off one by one while still in the hands. He had to switch her slightly inward off the heels of the leader Komati River who was hanging outward, which closed a possible gap. However, a nice gap then opened and Just Be Lekker galloped through full of running and outsprinted the well regarded Irish-bred Fastnet Rock mare Fastnet Filly, who started favourite and to whom Just Be Lekker was giving 4,5kg. Fastnet filly finished a well beaten 2,40 length second and was followed home by her Brett and James Crawford-trained 20/1 shot stablemate Artiste. Ceuta and Komati River were next best respectively.
Candice said the filly showed a lot at home, so was pleased to see her back to her best in her fifth run following a six month layoff for a setback.
Just Be A Lekker is a Ralphs family homebred.
The win saw the completion of a double for the Dawson/Moodley combination, who had won with the promising Wilgerbosdrift and Mauritzfontein homebred Buffalo Bill Cody gelding Pumpkin Pie over 1600m earlier. Pumpkin Pie has now won two of his first two starts and Moodley extracted an impressive late surge from him after he had weaved his way through the field having been dropped out to last from a wide draw of eleven.
Moodley completed a treble when winning the last race over 1160m on the Tony Peter-trained Erupt filly Blizzard Snow and his timing was once again impeccable as he came from a handy position and did just enough to hold off a late charge from Roaming Spirit.
