The spectre of some rain again hangs over the Sha Tin meeting on Sunday but otherwise it looks like two fantastic Group One races with Australian sprinters Chautauqua and Buffering holding the headlines in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize and Japan‘s super miler Maurice likewise in the Champions Mile.
Maurice is a big, powerful and ultra-impressive horse to look at and his appearance and work have been top notch.
At any other meeting he would probably have the highest marks for his training but that goes instead to Chautauqua, whose gallop on Tuesday morning this week was reminiscient of another powerhouse Japanese horse called Lord Kanaloa.
Lord Kanaloa set the benchmark for pre-international gallops at Sha Tin before he bolted in with his two Hong Kong Sprints but Chautauqua was in the same league when he let fly on the turf track on Tuesday. Buffering has also looked very sharp in the morning without making the same eye-popping times as Chautauqua but, as a pair, they look awfully tough to beat for a talented set of locals led by Aerovelocity and Peniaphobia.
But Paul O’Sullivan has not been overly upbeat about Aerovelocity following his colic in Japan – it was a minor attack but enough to greatly interrupt the horse’s training, and O’Sullivan has been quoted as saying he is running out of time and wishes he had another week. And then his chances suffered a second blow at the barrier draw with gate fourteen, while most of the other main chances drew nicely.
In the Champions Mile, Maurice looks better than he did before winning the Hong Kong Mile in December and he had been rumoured to have won that race despite not being at his best after some niggling problems. He is shining in the coat and moving very well this time although some Japanese journalists and one or two rival trainers have commented that he perhaps looks too pretty for his first race in five months.
Maurice drew well with a middle barrier in a race that doesn’t look to have much speed and the only on-pace horses Packing Pins, Contentment and Beauty Flame drew side by side in gates one, two and three.
The weather apps are saying 40 per cent chance of rain on Sunday but whether it is the same scenario as the QE II Cup looks less likely.
By Nathan Mody
