THE Northern Cape takes rare pride of place on the national racing programme this weekend when Flamingo Park hosts a Saturday feature race.

The R200 000 RA Flamingo Mile has attracted a quality field of fourteen, including some leading lights amongst the raiding parties from Gauteng. The mile contest is one of three features on a bumper card that launches the Flamingo Park Festival, and tote coffers will be boosted by the high rolling visitors, who will be in town for the RA Northern Region Awards function on Friday evening.

The big names are here in numbers. Geoff Woodruff, Mike de Kock, SeanTarry, Weiho Marwing and Roy Magner arrive in numbers at the meeting in pursuit of the decent prize money and it is Woodruff’s Australian bred Killua Castle who stands out as a likely winner.

Right Beauty, a shout in the dust at best.

Killua Castle is a son of Churchill Downs who has only managed one win from 12 starts in a rather topsy turvy career to date.

De Kock’s Right Beauty is another runner that is suggested more on reputation and a sense of belief in hidden ability, than on recent performances. The son of Right Approach has run 4 consecutive thirds in his last four sand starts and appears so much better than a three time winner at this stage of his career. He stayed on for third and four lengths away after conceding Storm Surf 4kgs over 1450m in a strong MR 103 Handicap at the Vaal last time.

He is a lot keener to get into his races in the blinkers these days and was pushed into the race early last time, before fading out and then rallying late. It was a rather mixed up unsure ride and Randall Simons jumps aboard for some fresh hands. Right Beauty has a powerful finish and represents serious value for PA punters. Mike has won the race twice.  – extracted from Sporting Post, thanks to  Karel Miedema and his team.