Muscutt saddles a ‘Star’

The meeting on the Poytrack at Greyville today is likely to produce a few challenges for bettors.

The eight-race card is made up of three Maiden Plates and five low-level handicaps, three of them exclusively for apprentices.

But the good news is that most fields are relatively small and that should give punters the opportunity to load many of the legs of the exotics.

The runner who stands out as the banker in all bets is East Coast Star, who lines up in Race 3, a Maiden Plate for fillies and mares over 1400m.

The three-year-old daughter of Visionaire does not feature in the best-weighted column because a horse needs to have raced three times to get an official merit rating and this fi lly has only run twice.

However, she does look to have the most room for improvement and could turn out to be quite a talent. She is trained by Peter Muscutt, who recently took out his own licence after many years of running Brett Crawford’s KwaZulu-Natal yard.

East Coast Star made her debut in September on the Polytrack, going off at 25-1. However, she put up a good effort and finished a 3.30-length second behind Admire Me.

Her next run was at Scottsville over 1200m in yielding going and Muscutt tried her in blinkers. Clearly, they did not do what was expected as they have been removed.

For this run, Anton Marcus has been engaged to take the ride for the first time. She is nicely drawn at No 4 and on breeding is expected to enjoy the additional 200m.

She is a half-sister to Tambalang, a fi lly trained by Sean Tarry who won the Listed Aquanaut Handicap over 2400m at Turffontein, so the distance should not be an issue.