Odds on favourite Exultant won the G1 QE11 over 2000m in Hong Kong, just as the masses expected, but it was a hard- fought victory. He battled to get past frontrunner Time Warp after a protracted duel and then required extra reserves to hold off his stable mate, Furore.
Punters taking a short price were zapped when Beauty Generation got edged out in the G1 Mile. The favourite is, arguably, not the force he was when younger and succumbed to the persistent challenge of Southern Legend after a long tussle down the straight.
The G1 Chairman’s Sprint fell to Mr Stunning, expertly handled from off the pace by Karis Teetan. The seven year- old gelding, who had won top races in 2018 regained his mojo to dart past Big Time Baby, Thanks Forever and Hot King Prawn in a clustered finish.
The conventional wisdom is to dismiss seven year- olds as being past it, or certainly having lost sufficient zip to be competitive in high class dashes. Yet so many prestigious sprints around the world are actually won by aging speedballs that being prejudiced against these “old-timers” may be a costly myth worth forsaking.
Racing remains in a holding pattern here in SA. Trainers are still hard at work keeping the horses in their care as fit as possible for when the program resumes. We’ll find out within a couple of days from government if racing starts this coming weekend, or not.
Precedents for staging horse races in a safe and considerate manner are currently being set in various overseas jurisdictions like Hong Kong, sections of Australia, parts of the USA and Sweden. The UK is mooting a return with field sizes limited to 12 and using senior jockeys to mitigate against the chances of injuries being sustained, and further burdening of a hard- pressed health sector.
Putting on meetings behind closed doors with strict testing beforehand for essential participants and abiding by careful social distancing/protective measures seems a feasible solution during this drawn out pandemic, but we will have to wait and see precisely how the authorities phase it all in…