African Night Sky made a powerful move down the rail under Bernard Fayd Herbe to sweep the Winter Series at Kenilworth. He really is a very good horse, quickening up to pulverise the opposition in the Highlands Stud Winter Derby and repeat a feat achieved by the legendary, Pocket Power. The son of Dynasty was, fittingly, bred at Highlands, with owner Fred Crabbia making a rare trip to the Cape Town track to cheer on his budding champ.

Silvan Star (s/s 102) form looked good enough to win a Fillies feature during the Winter after running well behind Milton last time and she got the job done in the Ladies Mile. The daughter of Silvano made her race-winning move coming into the short straight to comfortably hold off Ngaga’s (s/s 99) late dart. A Time To Dream (s/s 97 +) was stiff – losing many lengths when rearing at the jump, but still managing to get within three lengths of the winner.

Tap ‘O Noth (s/s 89 +) has a big reputation to uphold, and he made no mistakes when blasting past rivals in the Langerman. By another top sire in Captain Al, he followed up on a debut win three months ago by again proving much the best. Big Pleasure maintained recent improvement to get second, yet was four lengths back at the wire.

Sean Tarry was on fire at Greyville, saddling six winners on Sunday’s card out of the 20 he sent to post. Most impressive of all was Matador Man (s/s 106) who stormed through on the stand-side to win the KZN Breeders Million Mile. The son of Toreador had run some fine races on the Highveld despite always being slow to go, and really turned it on carrying just 53kg’s to win in a romp. Dawn Calling (s/s 103) ran a career best trying blinkers second time and is vastly better than her stark record of 1 win from 15 starts indicates.

Punters honing in on favorites had a prosperous haul over the weekend – a procession of fancied winners at Kenilworth and Greyville punished the layers and lead to some meagre exotic dividends, though Turffontein on Saturday provided a few jolts. There may be a lot of random variables and “chaos” in horse racing but, there is order and predictability too, and the market gets the probabilities right much of the time.