L’Ormarins King’s Plate

(Group 1)

CHARLES Dickens turned on the style in no uncertain fashion to make amends for last year’s defeat in the L’Ormarins King’s Plate at Kenilworth last Saturday.

Gaynor Rupert’s homebred Trippi colt cut down fellow 14/10 joint-favourite See It Again as if he was standing still when Aldo Domeyer pressed the button approaching the furlong marker - and he then swept clear to score by nearly three lengths.

Domeyer, almost overcome with emotion and winning this race for the first time, said: “Last time he hung and almost took me over the fence. But when I got him to relax today, he listened to me a lot better.”

It was also a first King’s Plate for trainer Candice Bass-Robinson who admitted she had been expecting significant improvement, saying: “I went into this confident that I had him back to his best.”

L’Ormarins Stud owner Mrs Rupert always asks that racegoers wear blue and white on this particular day. Most of the women do, as do many of the men!

“This is the greatest day of my racing life. For 20 years I have been sponsoring the race and finally I have won it,” she said, adding that she regards Charles Dickens as the future of her stud operation. But home stallion Trippi is certainly the present - this was his third King’s Plate winner in four seasons.

Met favourite

Charles Dickens is now 6/4 joint-favourite with See It Again for the Met a fortnight today although past form suggests he may not be quite as good over the extra two furlongs. Also he came back cut into on his right hind fetlock.

“I think my horse is more effective over that trip,” said See It Again’s rider Piere Strydom, who added: “I was surprised how many people wrote off Charles Dickens here. I regarded him as champion of South Africa over a mile.’

The Bass-Robinson, Rupert combination also took the Cartier Paddock Stakes with the Lancaster Bomber-sired Beach Bomb. Juan-Paul van der Merwe had the mount as Domeyer could not do the weight. He benefitted from the steady pace to get up close home and beat even- money favourite Princess Calla by a neck.

THE big event off-course has been the decision of the National Horseracing Authority to publish the charges against trainer Tony Peter who failed to present one particular horse for testing at Turffontein on Summer Cup day last November despite being reminded to do so.

The NHA is accusing him of administering a substance to the horse Flying Bull and interfering with an official investigation by handing possible evidence (in two carrier bags) to Mrs Marcel Peter, and then preventing the investigator “from seizing evidence of the unlawful substance administration and forcibly holding him back.”

There are 11 allegations altogether including “refusing to hand over a plastic Ziplock bag when instructed to do so and instead proceeded to empty the Ziplock bag of all the white powder therein so as to hinder the special investigator from seizing it as evidence, fully knowing that by repeatedly emptying the bag there would be no evidence left to analyse!”