Cadet shows impressive form

After his smart back-to-back wins, CADET's form seemed to have tapered off, going on his poor last run on New Year's Day.

Although strongly supported at $16 for a win, the Ricardo Le Grange-trained three-year-old was soundly beaten when finishing an 8.9-length eighth to Shadow Of War over his winning trip of 1,000m on the Polytrack.

His subsequent work was also not sparkling until two weeks ago when he started to perk up again with some nice hit-outs.

Yesterday, Cadet put his improvement to the test in the fourth of five trials and, by golly, didn't he mesmerise the trackwatchers.

Ridden by apprentice MM Firdaus, Cadet started in a bunch but secured the lead on settling down.

He led into the straight by two lengths. His higher-rated stablemate Cyborg, a winner of three of his five starts, charged up to challenge under vigorous riding.

But Firdaus didn't have to lift a finger as he steered Cadet to win by a head. His mount could have won by a bigger margin if he had asked for some effort.

The other plus factor was his fast winning time of 1min 00.69sec for the 1,000m trip.

All indications now point to a good showing when Cadet resumes racing.

Besides Cadet, Le Grange also took three other trials he had runners in - Trial 2 with nice newcomer THE CAPITAL, Trial 3 with THE NUTCRACKER and Trial 5 with BARNATO.

In Trial 1, the Theo Kieser-trained ZEUS WARRIOR (blinkers test) beat the Alwin Tan-trained INFANTRY by a nose. Both looked well.