This Sunday sees Sha Tin stage the last Hong Kong race meeting before Christmas.
It looks a strong card, with plenty of highly promising young horses on show, and we head into the weekend on the back of Wednesday’s informative AWT programme at Sha Tin.
Two of the winners – Zilong and Gunnison – had won Group races in Australia before they were moved to Hong Kong.
Five of the winners were partnered by either Karis Teetan or Joao Moreira.
And, perhaps most notably of all, three of eight winners on the card had been trained at Conghua in recent months.
Danny Shum’s Golden Effort spent a couple of weeks there in November prior to his win in R5 under Alexis Badel.
Me Tsui’s Winning Supreme spent some time there before becoming Silvestre de Sousa’s latest winner in R4, while John Size gave Gunnison two lengthy Conghua spells before his runaway success in the Class 2 feature.
Of course, the fact that it is less than four months since Conghua was officially opened means this is still a very young project.
However, evidence is gradually building to suggest that horses can derive real benefits by spending time there and we look forward to seeing more trainers and horses make use of its benefits in 2019.
Racing continues at Sha Tin tomorrow and the third race on our card is the HK$2 million Griffin Trophy at 1400 metres for three-year-olds only and this race has produced top-class winners in its brief history. Luger won the 2013 Griffin Trophy before going on to win the 2015 BMW Hong Kong Derby and Pakistan Star won the 2016 edition and then had to wait over 16 months before putting together sensational victories in the APQEII Cup and the Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup this year.
The pace for this race will be good to slow with Perfect Match and Quadruple Double the only horses with natural gate speed. Perfect Match has won his last two starts, most recently three weeks ago over the course and distance when he drew away impressively. He should be able to dictate the pace and has the ability to come home with a good closing sectional which makes him a win and place chance.
Witness Hunter also comes into the race in top form having won his last two races over the course and distance. He does his best work coming from the back and though the pace may not be to his liking, his good form over the trip makes him a solid place chance.
Nordic Warrior, the lone ISG in the field, is showing improvement in his recent form and is a place chance along with Shinealot. Both horses will do their best running through the final stages of the race. Fabulous November and Pakistan Star are the two ISGs that have won this race in its short seven-year history.
Finally this week, all that remains is for me to wish all our friends, followers and staff a very merry Christmas. I wish everyone a peaceful holiday period and hope to see many of you again soon on the racecourse.
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