Joao Moreira made his race return from suspension on Wednesday at Happy Valley but it was Zac Purton – his main rival in the Jockeys’ Championship – who stole the show. The Australian rode a quartet of winners that evening – his second four-timer this season – and with Joao riding just one winner on the card, Zac has again extended his lead to 11 wins at the top of the table. Zac has added another G1 success just moments ago, riding Sacred Falls to win the simulcast race Doncaster Mile at Randwick. With his winning quartet in Hong Kong in midweek, this for sure makes the title race more interesting with less than 25 meetings to go this season, and I’m sure you and I can look forward to an exciting battle between these two outstanding riders in the weeks ahead.
As we enter into the later months of our racing season, the Audemars Piguet Queen Elizabeth II Cup and Champions Mile become the focus of our attention. The former race will be held in a fortnight’s time and earlier on Wednesday we announced the list of selected runners for this 2000m G1 event. That list is made up of 12 runners with fantastic credentials, and among them there are half a dozen G1 winners, and six that have just competed in top-class events at the Dubai World Cup meeting last month.
Vercingetorix is one of those. I reckon many of you will have taken note of his decent performance in winning the G1 Jebel Hatta at the Dubai Super Saturday meeting, and he found only the Japanese runner Just A Way too good for him in the G1 Dubai Duty Free last time. He and his stablemate Sanshaawes being in the field means that this is the 11th consecutive year that trainer Mike de Kock will be represented in the AP QEII Cup. With so many visits here, Hong Kong racing fans know the trainer pretty well, having won this race twice already with Irridescence (2006) and Archipenko (2008). It will be interesting to see how his contenders perform this time.
While Mike de Kock is a huge supporter of our international races, the same applies to the connections of French veteran Cirrus des Aigles as he is set to visit Hong Kong for the 6th time, albeit it will be his first tilt at the AP QEII Cup. Japanese horse Epiphaneia, himself a classic winner thanks to his victory in the Japanese St Leger last year, is another notable invitee for our race this time. On paper I think it looks like he has an even stronger chance than his trainer’s Rulership who you will recall was an impressive winner of the 2012 race, which was his maiden victory at G1 level. Epiphaneia is already a proven G1 winner, so for me, I think he could be a strong contender for his trainer Katsuhiko Sumii to repeat his success of two years ago.
The exciting field also has the added attraction of bringing together the best of Hong Kong’s older horses against the local four-year-old crop. The flagbearers for the established stars are of course the trio just returned from Dubai – Military Attack, Akeed Mofeed and Dominant. Derby winner Designs On Rome and the horse that ran so well to be third in that race, Dibayani, will square off against older horses in a G1 contest for the first time. Although it will be no easy task for these two emerging stars, there are successful examples in the past as Industrialist in 2000, Vengeance Of Rain in 2005 and Ambitious Dragon in 2011 all won this race in their four-year-old campaigns. Anyway, it promises to be an interesting line-up and I hope all of the invitees, especially those overseas runners, will enjoy smooth preparations and pleasant journeys to Hong Kong ahead of the race. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to watch them in action at morning trackwork at Sha Tin in the near future.
Tomorrow we have another race meeting at Sha Tin, with it being the annual HKJC Community Trophy day. This year marks the 10th running of the HKJC Community Trophy race, which again offers us an occasion to highlight the Club’s commitment to establishing long-standing and successful partnerships with different organisations and stakeholders in our community, with the aim to continue our staunch support of Hong Kong society. There will be more than 200 guests and representatives from various government departments, NGOs, community groups and academic institutions come joining us at Sha Tin tomorrow. It’s a great occasion for us and I look forward meeting all these distinguished guests and hard-working community figures at the racecourse.
For the 11 races on the card, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Community Trophy is featured in the middle of the day as the 6th race. The early pace will be on the slow side for this 1400m contest, which should work to the advantage of Really The Best, a last start winner of a slowly run mile. He will have a good position early and has a win over the course and distance earlier this season. He looks to be a solid place chance.
Island Garden will go back from his wide draw and is a win and place chance after his big effort three weeks ago. He overcame some traffic issues in the straight and closed strongly for his best run to date in eight starts here. Winning Premium and Vara Pearl will benefit from the step up in trip to 1400m and Mr Gourmet drops a grade. All three are place chances.
Comment
