One Stripe gets home on the outside rail. (Picture: Wayne Marks)
The silly season in horseracing parlance would be the period when the three-year-olds are beginning to clash in feature races and it often leads to exuberant hailing of the winners as future superstars, but the cold facts can bring a more sobering view.
Karel Miedema is a renowned horseracing analyst and the cold facts of his ratings on his raceform.co.za website paints a dim view of the current crop of three-year-olds, although it should be pointed out that jockey Gavin Lerena poured accolades on One Stripe after Saturday’s Gr 1 Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas win and felt he was a horse who would keep on improving too.
Miedema only awarded the Cape Guineas winner One Stripe an Ability Rating (AR) of 103 with runner up Eight On Eighteen being given 101 and third-placed Great Plains 97.
This can be compared to the 107 AR he gave One Stripe’s sire One World when he finished third in the Cape Guineas to Soqrat in 2018 and he gave Soqrat a 110 that year.
In 2019 he gave the Cape Guineas winner Kilindini a 101 and the low AR proved to be an accurate assessment as the latter failed to win a race in three seasons in Hong Kong.
In 2020 he gave the Cape Guineas winner Russian Rock a lowly 99 and once again the accuracy of this AR was seen in that Russian Rock went on to win only one more race, a Graduation Plate.
In 2021 he gave the Cape Guineas winner Double Superlative a decent 113 AR and once again it was an astute assessment as this horse returned from injury two seasons later to win Cape Town’s biggest race, the WSB Met.
In 2022 he gave the celebrated Cape Guineas winner Charles Dickens a conservative 110 and this horse went on to score a high of 117 when winning the Gr 1 Hollywoodbets Gold Challenge the same season and the following season he won the prestigious Gr 1 L’Ormarins King’s Plate.
Last year Miedema gave the Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas winner Snow Pilot a lowly 97 and once again this proved accurate as this horse failed to win another race as a three-year-old. However, Snow Pilot has transformed into an exciting four-year-old and has earned the highest AR this season, Miedema giving him an impressive 121 for his six length win in a Progress Plate over 1400m last time out.
Given the accuracy of the aforementioned Cape Guineas ratings, what hope is there that One Stripe can go on to big things?
One point in his favour is he gave 1kg to Snow Pilot in a Progress Plate over 1400m in October and lost to him by only a length.
Furthermore, One Stripe’s sire One World continually improved and went on to win the Met and achieved an AR of 119 when doing so.
Nevertheless, One Stripe’s 103, which is one lower than the best AR he received as a two-year-old, ranks as only the 41st highest AR achieved this season in Miedema’s raceform ratings.
Only one three-year-old has achieved a higher AR this season, Pistol Pete, who was given a 112 for his weight-carrying run when second in a MR96 Handicap over 1100m in which he gave the useful winner Greaterix 9kg and was beaten only two lengths.
