Blazing Speed to Try for Repeat in Hong Kong
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Blazing Speed heads 11 entries for the final group I race of Hong Kong's 2014-15 season, the HK$10 million Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup, May 31 at Sha Tin.
The race will be staged as an international group I contest for the first time this season.
Tony Cruz's 6-year-old son of Dylan Thomas won last year's edition of the race, the final leg of Hong Kong's Triple Crown (for older horses), and looks to be heading into the 2,400-meter (about 1 1/2-mile) event in peak form once again following his victory in last month's Audemars Piguet QEII Cup (HK-I). Viva Pataca, in 2006 and 2007, is the most recent horse to achieve back-to-back wins in the Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup.
Among 10 set to challenge Blazing Speed, are Khaya and Thunder Fantasy, both from the John Size stable. Khaya ran third to the French raider Flintshire in the Longines Hong Kong Vase (HK-I) last December, while the 4-year-old Thunder Fantasy scored his biggest success this season in the Hong Kong Classic Cup, a local group I.
The pair stretched their legs in a 1,200-meter (about six-furlong) gate trial on the all-weather surface May 22, with both horses working to enhance their fitness ahead of the stamina test in nine days' time. Khaya traveled handily and was niggled through the closing stages by Karis Teetan.
"He did some work today and that will bring him on in his fitness for the longer distance. He's fit and well, he's healthy and that's the main thing," said Teetan.
Thunder Fantasy had a quieter time of it under jockey Brett Prebble, as he stayed out of the kick-back and bowled home at the back of the nine trial runners.
John Moore saddled the mighty Viva Pataca to three wins, all told, in the Champions & Chater Cup and this year appears set to rely on a quartet of talented runners headed by local group III winner Helene Happy Star and the 2013 Hong Kong Vase victor Dominant.
Same World and Harbour Master are the other two potential Moore contenders, while Mr Gnocchi, newly in the care of Tony Millard, the Tony Cruz-trained Helene Super Star, and the Richard-Gibson-trained duo Take To The Limit and Wayfoong Express are also engaged.