DUAL Queen’s Plate winner Jet Dark signed off his high-class racing career by getting the better of old rival Kommetdieding in the Group 1 World Sports Betting Cape Town Met at Kenilworth last Saturday.

But the 4/1 joint second favourite really had to fight for it and at the line there was only a fifth of a length between the two.

“I was never confident,” reported Richard Fourie who was winning the Cape Town spectacular for the first time. “It was a very slow run race and my horse lost all momentum when he jumped a patch just before the straight. I was knocked around quite a bit and it got really difficult.”

For decades the Met eluded the Snaith family. Chris never won it and his son Justin did not break his duck until Oh Susanna five years ago.

Jet Dark, bred by Gaynor Rupert and a sone of her spectacularly successful sire Trippi, is owned by businessman Nick Jonsson and his friend Thomas Crowe.

According to Snaith, both men played polo for South Africa – “so they are better horsemen than me!”

Kommetdieding, who won last year’s Met and the 2021 Durban July, will also now be retired to stud. However, star three-year-old filly Make It Snappy, backed down to 7/2 favouritism, was most disappointing and was afterwards found to be coughing and not striding out.

Warrior, carrying the Nagle colours, represented a 66/1 sporting challenge by an ownership that included Sue Magnier, Linda Shanahan and Anna Doyle. He finished eighth but was beaten less than two and a half lengths.

French ace

Many in the sizeable crowd were seeing Christophe Soumillon in action for the first time and the French ace rammed home that he is something special by scoring on his first three rides.

His handling of Desert Miracle in the mile Group 1 Schweppes Majorca Stakes had to be seen to be believed.

He sat at the back of the six-runner field until a furlong out when he switched her out, pressed the button in earnest and swept her into the lead. This was no ton-in-hand job – he had to ask for everything – but he timed his effort to perfection. Had he waited longer, or gone earlier, he would almost certainly have been beaten.

“She needs to get covered and to come late,” he explained and an impressed Mike de Kock added: “She is an awesome horse and she has a hell of a finish on her – that is when everything is right and she doesn’t have respiratory issues.”

De Kock recalled the purchase of Desert Miracle’s dam Welwitschia at Goffs by Jehan Malherbe at the 2009 Orby Sale. Despite being by Oasis Dream, the Form Bloodstock man got her for Mary Slack for just IR60,000 gns.

Rio Querari bounced back to something like his best in the Pongracz Cape Flying Championship, coming from last to second in little more than a furlong. But he was unable to peg back the Dean Kannemeyer-trained 7/2 joint favourite Gimme A Prince who scored by a neck.

The winner is by the Queen’s Plate scorer Gimmethegreenlight out of a Trippi mare and is trained by Dean Kannemeyer for Lady Laidlaw.