This season’s competition for the popular 1O1O Million Challenge officially ended last Wednesday, with the Tony Cruz-trained Cape Canaveral crowned the series winner. He cemented his top rank before the finale meeting with an unassailable lead. Despite that, three of the four horses in the top 10 ran on that final evening and delivered some nice performances as Gold Racer, Imperial Rome and Noble Deluxe all secured top-four finishes. It’s great to see that connections showed such good support for the challenge and went there striving for the best results in their last start in the series even though the winner had flown.
Cape Canaveral’s tally of 63 points and Gold Racer’s tally of 61 following Wednesday’s victory, both broke the previous record high in the 10-year history of the series, which stood at 60 points. Both horses deserve great credit for the outstanding consistency of their performances at the Valley during the first half of the season – as do their respective trainers Tony Cruz and Peter Ng. I’m sure you’ll agree that these two Valley specialists fully deserve their top two placing. As Tony Cruz said after the presentation ceremony, it’s fantastic to have a sponsor like 1O1O. Their support of this Valley series adds a further notch to the excitement through the season – it offers trainers and owners added incentives and also gives these horses a chance to fight for extra racing honour.
The Million Challenge successfully attracted the extra attention of racing fans to Valley races early in the season, but as we are now past halfway in the season I believe many of you will have started to focus more closely on the fierce battle between Douglas Whyte and Zac Purton in the jockeys’ premiership. Although Zac developed an early lead, Douglas has managed to rack up quite a number of wins in recent meetings. On Wednesday he again outscored Zac by two winners to one, bringing his season winning tally to 50 and equalling his rival’s total. Douglas is now just trailing Zac on count-back as he has fewer runner-up finishes on the board at the moment.
It’s no exaggeration at this point to say that the competition for the Champion Jockey title this season is the fiercest one since the thrilling tussle between Douglas and Brett Prebble back in 2009/10, with Douglas emerging as the winner with a score-line of 100-99. With Douglas being a dominant force in local racing for more than a decade, and champion for 12 straight seasons, many have commented that they are pleased to see a new serious challenger like Zac join the fray and chase for the jockeys’ premiership. I agree too as this positive competition brings added excitement and can only benefit local racing.
I still think that Zac faces the more difficult task. Douglas is a remarkable champion and has been at the top for so long that he has long time support from various trainers, and his tendency to deliver peak performances when it matters later in the season means it will be important for Zac to explore new partnerships and support from some other trainers in the coming months, such as the recent enjoyable tie he had with John Moore – with their success on Military Attack in the HKG1 HK Gold Cup last week. But Zac is currently in tip-top form and I believe if he is able to garner more support from different connections, he will be a tough opponent for Douglas. Racing fans will no doubt continue to pay close attention to their duel as we move into the latter stage of the season.
This afternoon Douglas will have 10 rides while Zac has nine. On paper it seems that Douglas is in an advantageous position with rides on a few in-form and quality runners. Akeed Mofeed, who will feature in the Class 2 Taipa Handicap, is one of them. I believe some racing fans would also give certain focus to this race as there also features four more Derby entrants in Chater Dream, Genki Twins, Blazing Speed and Navel Orange. With the Derby selection announcement to be made next Wednesday, I’ll see if any of them could deliver some decent performances in this race to boost their chance of being included in the Derby line-up on 17 March.
There is another duel at Sha Tin today as visiting Macau horses are in action against the home runners in the first leg of our annual inter-port races – the HKG3 Hong Kong Macau Trophy. Nine Hong Kong runners, each with a Hong Kong rating of 110 to 90, will compete against five from Macau, who will each receive a 15-pound allowance. The pace will be good to fast due to the Macau horses likely to push forward with Wealthy Man, Good Uncle and Dr Sweet will try to overcome their awkward draws. Absolutely Win can take the box seat while Keen Marie can be well placed. Absolutely Win is the best chance for the Macau team and the HK Team has to be careful not to give him a chance to get away too far to catch, especially with the C Course we are racing on today.
But I still prefer Hong Kong team horses more. Among them Penglai Xianzi is in great form and is working well. He will be well positioned behind the pace and should not be underestimated for a place. Let Me Handle It will benefit from the good to fast pace coming from the back with a strong run and he is working very well. He’s a place chance too. The same applies to Majestic Falcon who returned from a short break and was unlucky last time being crowded at the 850m, had no run at the 400m and was blocked again at the 200m before running on well when clear. He has a win and place chance. This is the case for Keen Marie too but even more to Solar Great and most of all for Happy Era who is back to his best distance over 1400m.
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