American Story well weighted at the Vaal

An Allowance Plate for fillies and mares over 1800m tops the card on the Vaal Inside track tomorrow and lightly weighted American Story can score for the Ormond Ferraris yard.

This four-year-old daughter of Judpot is the best handicapped runner and with just 52kg on her back and Muzi Yeni at the helm could prove hard to beat. However, there are mixed form lines with top weight Pennington Sands, two of which favour Amer­ican Story and one that points to Tyrone Zackey’s charge.

Twice this year the pair met in races won by Banking April. The first, on 21 January, saw Penning­ton Sands finish 4.35 lengths in front of American Story. Howev­er, there is now a 7kg turnaround, more than enough to reverse the form. They met again on 11 Feb­ruary in a FM 91 Handicap over 1800m on the Inside track at Turf­fontein and again Pennington Sands had the edge but was only one length in front at the finish. Again, from the weights in that race there is a 7kg turnaround in favour of the Ferraris runner.

Inaninstant, who is also in this race, finished behind both of them and is 8.5kg worse off with American Story and 3kg worse off with Pennington Sands so Sean Tarry’s charge looks unlikely to reverse the placings with the pair.

Pennington Sands and Ameri­can Story met for the third time on 16 March over 1800m at Turf­fontein and Zackey’s runner fin­ished 3.25 lengths ahead of Ameri­can Story. The weight turnaround from that race is just 2kg which fa­vours Pennington Sands. Howev­er, 2.5kg of the weight difference in that last race was made up on an apprentice claim. The change to an experienced jockey like Yeni could make a huge difference.

Secondly, American Story ran in blinkers for the first time in that event and raced a lot handier than normal and faded late.

She is carded to race in blink­ers again but could be more used to them and with her light weight, and Yeni behind a master of pace, it could suit them to race close to the leaders this time.

Pennington Sands also ran on Classic Day in the Grade 3 Jaca­randa Handicap over 1800m on the Turffontein Standside track. Despite a slow start and a wide draw, she still ran a 1.40-length second behind Polyphonic.