TWELVE runs – five wins! Not bad for a filly who took nine months to win her second race!

But now, B Twenty One’s class is starting to come to the fore. She’s excelled over ground and she’s taken every stiffer task with confidence, like winning Thursday’s Middle Stakes over 240om at the Vaal by 2.50-lengths – racing in open company for Anthony Delpech.

Mathew de Kock said after B Twenty One’s previous win that she was improving, racing at her right rating and talented enough to win a small feature. He’d probably repeat those words with even more confidence after yesterday’s success.

A daughter of Silvano and Park Lane, by Elliodor, B Twenty One hails from a good female line and owners Jessica Slack and Peter White can look forward to more, this is almost certainly not the end of the road for the daughter of Silvano.

Intriguing Lady, right rating, right race.

At Turffontein last Tuesday, Callan Murray rode well-bred Intriguing Lady (12-1) to a welcome win for Al Adiyaat South Africa in a MR81 handicap over 1800m.

Intriguing Lady has raced 13 times for a second win – nine times after her first appearance of an 87 rating as a young three-year-old and Mike de Kock commented: “Intriguing Lady shows us good work and we’ve persisted with her, so long that her rating has dropped from 87 to 71 but at last she was in the right race off the right rating.

“We’ve long with the handicappers to drop ratings quicker than they’d done before. It took nine runs for Intriguing Lady to come down from her two-year-old rating of 87, but she’s dropped fast recently like the handicappers are doing with others and for that they deserve credit. More runners are getting a chance to be competitive, sooner.

“Not many horses improve to even near the full extent of their ratings on weight-for-age terms.  Intriguing Lady started as an 87 following her two-year-old career, but was out of depth until now, off her much lower rating. On a line through Dawn Flight, both of them ran more or less exactly to form.”