Two of Hong Kong’s most exciting emerging talents will take their places in Saturday’s (14 November) Class 1 Panasonic Cup at Sha Tin Racecourse. The 1400m handicap represents the biggest test yet for Blizzard (121lb) and Sun Jewellery (124lb), both of whom have the Hong Kong Four-Year-Old Series as an option in the early part of 2016.
Blizzard’s reputation rocketed three weeks ago when he handed a first career defeat to Sun Jewellery’s stablemate, the highly-regarded Thewizardofoz, in a battling neck triumph. That success took the Ricky Yiu-trained gelding’s career record to six from 10 and racked up a hat-trick for the season.
Karis Teetan has been in the plate for each of the Starcraft four-year-old’s last three wins and the Mauritian rider is looking forward to Saturday’s high-class contest.
“Blizzard’s a lovely horse and he’s done well this season,” said Teetan. “His last win was a gutsy win - in fact his last two wins were very gutsy. He’s got a nice draw (6), and the horse is good and healthy, so we’re looking forward to it. He’s in good condition at the moment and he’s improving every time.”
Blizzard has progressed from Class 4, with his latest two successes achieved in Class 2. Saturday’s 14-runner race will be his first in Class 1.
“He’s stepping up in class now, it’s all Class 1 horses and some of them are bottom of Group 3 horses, so it will be a good task for him and we’ll see what he can do,” said Teetan. “I think the main danger is Sun Jewellery, he’s a lovely horse, so it looks like a competitive race for Blizzard.
“You can have him where you want to but with that weight and the danger horse drawn one, I’ll just have him behind the speed where he’s comfortable and wait for the straight. He always tries his best in the straight - I’ll let him run to the line.”
Like Thewizardofoz, the John Size-trained Sun Jewellery will take an unbeaten record into battle against Blizzard - the Snitzel gelding is three from three. Each of those wins came within a two-month spell at the end of last season and Size is tempering expectations for this first-up run.
“Sun Jewellery seems all right,” said Size. “He should have resumed racing probably earlier than this but he had a temperature and so we had to wait a couple of weeks for that episode to pass and get back into training, and then find a suitable race.
“This is a fairly strong event but he’s on a mark of 101 so there are no more weak races for him. He’s trained all right, he looks okay - he had a trial last week so I think he’s ready to go to the races. He certainly should progress from it but he’s been a good horse fresh in the past so you could expect him to do well.”
Sun Jewellery cruised through a 1200m all-weather track barrier trial on 6 November, crossing the line an easy third under regular partner Joao Moreira.
“It’s hard to put a figure on how fit he is,” continued Size, “but what happens sometimes is the fact that they’re fresh actually helps them, so he would race like a reasonably fresh horse. It’s probably going to be a little bit awkward from the one gate because you’ve got to use him a little bit to hold his spot and take some energy out of a horse that’s resuming. But we’ll deal with all of that and he seems in pretty good order to race and then make some progress.”
Two of Sun Jewellery’s wins have been achieved at the Panasonic Cup distance and the other at 1200m. The Four-Year-Old Series kicks off in January with the Hong Kong Classic Mile, leading into the Hong Kong Classic Cup (1800m) and ending with the BMW Hong Kong Derby (2000m), so Size knows his charge’s ability to stay farther must be put to the test at some point.
“We’ve got to assess what sort of distance he would be comfortable at,” he said. “He’s a big, long-striding horse and he looks comfortable when he’s working - he’s by a sprinting sire but we’ll just have to give him his opportunity to run a mile or further. He could run in the four-year-old classics, so that will be his first aim and we’ll see how he goes.”
The Caspar Fownes-trained Divine Calling heads the Panasonic Cup weights with 129lb under Zac Purton. The field also features the 2014 HKG3 Hong Kong Macau Trophy (1400m) winner Super Lifeline (128lb), as well as the popular galloper Pikachu (116lb), while the John Moore-trained Dashing Fellow resumes rivalry with Blizzard on 4lb better terms after finishing two and a quarter lengths third to Teetan’s mount last start.
The Panasonic Cup is a race eight on the 10-race card and the afternoon’s racing commences at 1pm with the Panasonic Driving Video Recorder Handicap.
