One Stripe sets pace for three year olds

Every year racing fans have a rolling debate about the overall quality of the current generation of three-year-old horses.

- Mike Moon

Is the crop better or worse than the previous year's? Or when, compared to a perceived golden era of the past?

The assessment is key to assessing the sophomores - as Americans, and increasingly the rest of us, call them - when they start running in open company against older horses.

There's no argument this season; the youngsters are hot.

In January at Kenilworth, three-year-olds One Stripe and Eight On Eighteen won the L'Ormarins King's Plate and the WSB Cape Town Met respectively against the best older horses in the country.

They were the only three-year-olds in those races, which historically don't favour the young ones. They had 5/6kg weight advantages over most of their opponents.

In the end, the consensus is that One Stripe and Eight On Eighteen are, indeed, special talents, with the former already boasting a merit rating of 132, the second highest in the country.