A Pinnacle Stakes event headlines Saturday’s eight-race Highveld fixture on the Inside track at Turffontein.
The 1600m contest, Race 5 on the card, has attracted a quality field of 13 runners, including a handful of Grade 1 winners as well as several proven Stakes performers with Black Type on their résumés.
Puerto Manzano, a two-time winner at the highest level, is one of just two in the line-up with recent race fitness on his side after blowing away the cobwebs in a similar contest over 1450m on his seasonal reappearance last month.
He finished more than eight lengths adrift of Mercantour on that occasion but is 2.5kg better off and more effective over this distance.
However, Johan Janse van Vuuren’s stable stalwart has a bit to find at the weights on promising four-year-old fillies Frances Ethel and Beating Wings, the best-weighted runners in the race, and another Grade 1 scorer in their familiar foe, Silver Sanctuary, who had their measure in last season’s Woolavington 2000 at Hollywoodbets Greyville during KwaZulu-Natal’s Champion Season.
The Mike de Kock-trained filly deservedly broke through at the highest level that day having filled the runners-up berth in both Grade 1 Cape Fillies Guineas and Grade 1 Wilgerbosdrift SA Fillies Classic during a fruitful three-year-old campaign.
She is 2kg worse off with Beating Wings on the revised weight terms but benefits from the services of Muzi Yeni in the saddle.
Yeni only recently returned to home soil after swooping to Grade 1 success at Kranji last weekend in the Grand Singapore Gold Cup – the last race to be run in Singapore.
Silver Sanctuary is an attractive betting proposition on her seasonal comeback and she should represent generous each-way value in a hotly contested Pinnacle Stakes that most of the runners, including her, will be using as a stepping stone to bigger and better things in the coming weeks.
Including those three well-weighted fillies in boxed Swinger and Exacta bets, or in Trifecta permutations with distance-suited Atticus Finch could pay handsome dividends.
For Quartet purposes, both Puerto Manzano and Mercantour must be considered along with 2023 Hollywoodbets Durban July winner Winchester Mansion, who in-form Piere Strydom rides for Brett Crawford.
Crawford saddles another promising filly whose progress it could pay to follow in Race 6 over 1450m. He takes the wraps off Fatal Flaw, a daughter of New Predator, ahead of her eagerly anticipated reappearance in a Progress Plate.
Fatal Flaw finished sixth over 1200m on her two-year-old debut last term but hasn’t finished worse than second in five subsequent starts, winning once – over the same course and distance that she makes her comeback.
In her most recent outing, Fatal Flaw filled the runners-up berth behind Equus Champion Two-Year-Old Filly Quid Pro Quo in the Grade 1 Thekwini Stakes over 1600m at Hollywoodbets Greyville in late July.
This Crawford-trained filly achieved a rating of 107 but remains open to improvement and could surpass that mark in her sophomore year. She does have a bit to find on official ratings with De Kock-trained Gimmeanotherchance who is, and by some margin, the best-weighted runner in the race.
However, Fatal Flaw has just 50kg to shoulder and receives 8kg from that rival who is drawn wider out and could over-race in first-time blinkers.
Elsewhere on the card, Crawford-trained Spirito Selvaggio (Race 1) and De Kock’s last-start winner, Forgiveness (Race 7), are worth backing to deliver the goods.
Clive Robinson
