Paul Peter stable eyes continuing run of top form

Gauteng trainer Paul Peter, who ended the season with a bang at Greyville at the weekend, will be hoping to start the new campaign with more success at Turffontein on Wednesday.

Peter saddled two runners at the Champions Cup meeting and won with both. Maximizer notched the fifth win of his career by taking the 1,600m Darley Arabian.

Stablemate Fort Ember came up trumps in the grade 2 Gold Bracelet over 2,000m.

Bred at Maine Chance Farms, Maximizer, a son of Querari, has hardly put a foot wrong for the Hyperpaint Syndicate. Fort Ember outsmarted Durban July fourth Nightingale.

Fort Ember was a R60,000 buy from Arc-En-Ciel Stud and Saturday’s win took her earnings to more than R770,000.

On Sunday, Peter’s filly Folk Dance ran a creditable third in the Thekwini Stakes.

At an eight-race card at Turffontein on Wednesday Peter has a chance of landing a double with Moss Gas (second race) and Arabian Beat in the third.

Weichong Marwing will be on a high following his Gold Cup triumph on Hermoso Mundo so he is sure to get the best out of Moss Gas.

His chief danger could be stablemate Bally Swiss who won by the width of cigarette paper at the Vaal last week.

Ryan Munger has been among the winners lately and Peter has booked him to partner Arabian Beat in the third race.

This is a competitive event in which all of Pure Blond, Just As I Said and Sporting Monarch

could take a hand in the finish.

Jockey Keagan de Melo, who rode Maximizer to victory on Saturday, can go close on trainer Leon Erasmus’s unbeaten filly Varsity Princess in the fifth race.

Despite a tardy start, Varsity Princess accelerated well to win on debut and the four-year-old may well be ahead of the handicapper. The two horses who could make De Melo pull out all the stops are Cataluga and Lucky Houdalakis’s filly Memphis Belle.

Young Craig Zackey has been finding winners elusive lately, but he could score on Stanley Ferreira’s runner Bondiblu in the final leg of the jackpot. Zackey, who has ridden Bondiblu before, knows his mount has to be held up for a late run. Hopefully he will pounce in the closing stages and beat Brigtnumbersix and Return To Power.