THIS year Highveld trainers have made a concerted effort to raid Flamingo Park on Saturday for their biggest race meeting of the year, writes JACK MILNER.

Three Non-Black Type feature races will be run highlighted by the R200,000 RA Flamingo Mile. Also on the card are the R135,000 World Sports Betting Sprint over 1000m and the RA Diamond Stayers over 2200m.

Mike de Kock, who has won the trainers’ championship eight times, will be dispatching Toro Rosso to compete in the Flamingo Park Mile and the Brazilian-bred entire would be the obvious choice if the race were over 1450m. However, he has run unplaced in both of his starts over 1600m so one is not certain he will see out the distance, especially with top weight of 62kg.

While he has yet to race at Flamingo Park, Toro Rosso had some excellent form on the Vaal sand track with two wins and two places in four starts. He proved his fitness with an impressive 1.25-length victory over Kings Archer on the Vaal turf track in a 1400m event so he should not be written off.