Just a month ago Japan’s top miler Maurice produced a scintillating performance at Sha Tin to take the LONGINES Hong Kong Mile, completing his wonderful year of in which he was unbeaten in all six starts. That victory further cemented his paramount status in Japan and earlier this week, he earned the highest accolade in Japanese racing and was crowned the 2015 JRA Horse of the Year.
This was a similar situation when Japan’s top speedster Lord Kanaloa nabbed his second Hong Kong Sprint, before being elected as the JRA Horse of the Year in 2013. For me it’s certainly nice to see top overseas runners getting key wins in our international races on their way to securing champion status in their respective jurisdictions.
In the ceremony trainer Yasutoshi Ikee of Tenno Sho Autumn winner Lovely Day, second behind Maurice in the Horse of the Year voting, indicated there is a possibility of sending his horse to Hong Kong for the APQEII Cup in spring. Adding to Hong Kong Cup winner A Shin Hikari, should they both come, it will definitely give further boost to the attractiveness and quality of this HK$20 million G1 event in April.
On Saturday, jockey Silvestre de Sousa from Brazil will officially commence his first riding stint here in Hong Kong. When mentioning Brazil, I believe many of you would instantly think about football or the Rio Carnival. But in recent years Brazil has certainly exported some top-class jockeys to different racing jurisdictions. We are all familiar enough with Joao Moreira’s story, and the reigning Hong Kong champion jockey has built up a huge lead in the jockeys’ premiership this season. In Singapore, another Brazilian jockey, Manoel Nunes, dominated at Kranji and has been crowned champion there in the past two seasons.
Silvestre de Sousa was Brazil’s top representative in Europe as he notched his first British champion jockey title with 132 wins last season, culminating with his upset win when Arabian Queen defeated Golden Horn in the G1 Juddmonte International. Having ridden a winner in last month’s LONGINES IJC at Happy Valley, Silvestre will be riding in six local race meetings until the Stewards’ Cup day at the end of this month. He has nine mounts today and let’s see if he can get a winning start this afternoon.
Before getting to my thoughts on Saturday's feature race, I also wanted to add my wishes for a good recovery to our Horse of the Year, Able Friend. He will be sidelined for the rest of the season and we look forward to having him back.
The 10 races on today’s Sha Tin card include seven races on turf and three on the all-weather track. The Pearce Memorial Challenge Cup is run as a Class 2 handicap over 1200m, especially the top rated horses Fabulous One and Amazing Kids making it for me the most interesting race of the day.
Fabulous One has significant speed and should establish a clear early lead yet again. Imperial Champion and Caga Force should assume positions just behind with Amazing Kids next, securing a solid early spot.
Fabulous One and Amazing Kids are in great form and working well, and these two horses are standing out with not much between them. I prefer Amazing Kids because he has a much better draw than last time which forced him to go back and he could not improve his position or at least keep the distance between him and Fabulous One when the latter horse increased the tempo between the 800m and 400m. I believe that Amazing Kids will run much closer today from his good gate and can run the last 400m around half a second faster than Fabulous One and meets his rival 9 pounds better off
As place chances I see Born In China who has to come from the back and the newcomer Merion who won his last trial and is thrice-placed at Group level in Australia, as well as Simply Invincible who is a Group 1 winner over 1600m in New Zealand and made some progress in his trials.
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