The final Group races of the Hong Kong season take centre stage at Sha Tin on Sunday as the G3 Premier Cup (1400m) and G3 Premier Plate (1800m) offer a pair of four-year-olds a chance at redemption after the Classic Series.
There were few, if any, four-year-olds with a more exciting profile than the Francis Lui-trained Packing Hermod at the start of the season after he recorded two impressive wins from two starts last term.
But despite the hype heading into January’s Classic Mile after Packing Hermod collected another two wins from four outings this term, Lui’s gelding could not get the job done as the warm 2.8 favourite.
Lui rolled the dice with Packing Hermod, stepping him up to 1800m for the Classic Cup in March, but opted against a final push to the Hong Kong Derby over 2000m after his galloper could only manage seventh in the second leg of the four-year-old series.
Instead, the four-year-old gelding marched on against older horses, recording consecutive wins at Class 2 level over 1400m to his current rating of 107.
On Sunday, he is presented with a chance to stake his claim as a serious Group-level performer in Hong Kong as he teams up with Matthew Poon for the first time.
Poon is no stranger to riding some of Hong Kong’s champions – he has been a reliable pair of hands aboard Voyage Bubble and Lucky Sweynesse in barrier trials – and he says he is looking forward to getting his chance on Lui’s exciting gelding.
“He’s a young, up-and-coming talent so I’m hoping he will be competitive,” Poon told Idol Horse. “He’s a lovely ride in the morning and I galloped him the other day. I’m looking forward to it.”
Poon also hops aboard Straight Arron, who provided him with his first Group 2 success in March’s Chairman’s Trophy, in the Premier Plate.
“It was great to get the Group 2 win on him earlier in the season and hopefully he can run a nice race yet again,” he said.
While Packing Hermod began his four-year-old campaign with an unbeaten track and lofty expectations from his trainer, it was a different story for the Cody Mo-trained Pray For Mir, whose progress throughout his season has been slow, steady and somewhat under the radar.
He took four starts to get off the mark, didn’t have a rating high enough to get into the Classic Series and had to wait until his 15th career outing for his second career win. But, that success came and in stellar style too, when he landed last month’s G3 Lion Rock Trophy (1600m) under Matthew Chadwick.
Although Pray For Mir didn’t have the rating to qualify for the Classic Cup, Mile or Derby, the Australian-bred gelding will have his chance to get the better of this year’s Hong Kong Derby winner, Cap Ferrat, in the HK$4.2 million contest.
Cap Ferrat, who carried five pounds more than Pray For Mir, ran a respectable third in the G1 Champions & Chater Cup (2400m) last month and now becomes the first Hong Kong Derby winner in history to run in the Premier Plate as a four-year-old. ∎
