Silver Mountain looks like starting hot favourite for the World Sports Betting Cape Fillies Guineas after the way she made light of her supposedly impossible 16 draw to power home in the Choice Carriers Championship at Kenilworth on Saturday.
Aldo Domeyer, winning this Grade 2 for the first time, said: “She has improved with every run and in the straight it was unbelievable. I had some very good horses in front of me yet it seemed as if they were standing still.”
This was the first Choice Carriers win for the Mike Bass stable since Joshua’s Princess 11 years ago and for good measure they also had the third, Taffety Tart, who will also take her chance on the first Saturday in December.
Bass’s wife Carol said: “Mike thinks Silver Mountain is amazing. We have four really stunning fillies (Sublime Lady and Miss Marker are the other two) but this one is in a league of her own.”
Daughter Candice added: “Silver Mountain is a super filly. She has impressed from day one and she has always been that much better than anything else.”
Approaching the furlong marker it looked as if the only danger to Entisaar was the riderless Star Express who had unshipped Craig du Plooy in the pens and was afterwards declared a non-runner. But the 2-1 favourite was left standing by the winner and was beaten a length and a half. She was promptly ruled out of the Fillies Guineas.
Anthony Delpech said: “She didn’t quite get the trip – she’s got too much speed – and I think she is a sprinter.”
Mike de Kock added: “Second was not bad after five months off but I am convinced we were beaten by a better filly. Ours would have no chance with the winner over a mile and she is probably better over six furlongs. I will carry on sprinting with her.”
Flying Ice (33-1) was beaten less than three lengths into fourth but Neil Bruss was unhappy about the choice of course, saying: “This is the Cape season with Group races. Why are we still running on the winter course with its short run-in?”
Grant van Niekerk, who partnered the other two legs of a Bass treble, came in after the Harry The Horse Handicap convinced that Three Ballons is just the sort for the J & B Urban Honey Stayers on Met day.
Andre Nel puts Captain’s Flame, the Domeyer-ridden winning newcomer in the first, “in the top three of our fillies.”
Keagan de Melo rode his first Kenilworth winner when the Brett Crawford-trained 40-1 shot Accountability dead-heated with Greg Cheyne on Glen Kotzen’s Kiss Me Now (20-1) in a shock blanket finish to the Spring Valley Stud Maiden.
Sean Cormack picked up a week’s suspension for causing interference to fifth-placed Sava Sunset when scoring a most convincing win on 11-10 favourite Qing for Justin Snaith in the Drakenstein Veterinary Clinic Maiden.
– Michael Clower
– Picture (Liesl King): Silver Mountain wins the Choice Carriers Championship at Kenilworth
