Yip puts his name in lights with a treble at the Valley
Second-year trainer Dennis Yip Chor-hong celebrated his first treble at Happy Valley last night as he turned in a performance reminiscent of his old boss. Yip had been assistant to multiple championship winning Brian Kan Ping-chee before taking up his licence last season, and his effort was quickly resembling a Kan win blitz last night as he lined up three of the first four winners.
'I came here quite confident tonight but you never expect it will all work out so well,' Yip said after watching Cosmo Success (Douglas Whyte), Prince Golf (Gerald Mosse) and French Connection (Anton Marcus) make the first half of the card virtually a one-act affair.
Three-year-old Cosmo Success was highly impressive winning the opener, but Yip said he had Whyte to thank after the champion rider threaded a tiny opening along the rail to secure open ground.
'Cosmo Success improved tonight running at 1,650 metres, but Douglas persevered for a run where some jockeys might have hesitated and it made all the difference,' he said.
His second winner, Prince Golf, is bred to be a champion, being a son of 1993 Hong Kong Cup winner Romanee Conti, and is a half brother to the Caulfield and Melbourne Cup winning mare of two years ago, Ethereal.
'Yes, he is bred to be a very good horse, but I don't think there's much chance of him living up to that,' Yip said candidly after the gelding's Class 5 win. 'When Prince Golf was transferred to me he had a little problem, nothing serious but enough so that he was not a happy horse last season and it showed in his form. Since the summer break, he has been much better within himself and tonight he was up to a distance that suited him so I was not surprised by him winning.'
Yip crowned the treble with French Connection, a former Kan runner who provided Yip with his first win as a trainer last year and his first win again this season.
'French Connection is just very honest,' he said. 'He has a special liking for Happy Valley. Even in his trackwork he is often not very impressive, but he is a different horse when he comes here.'
Former champion trainer David Hill got off the mark for the term with Tanahmerah (Robbie Fradd) in the sixth, sweeping up from the rear in an impressive first outing at the Happy Valley mile.
'I think this is a very good horse but he's been a bit weak so I've kept him to sprint races,' Hill said. 'Now he's a bit stronger, I thought it was time to step up to a more suitable distance and he's won very well.'
Gerald Mosse took riding honours with two clear wins on Prince Golf and Manfred Man Ka-leung's Supreme Star, while Glyn Schofield won on Engineering Wonder then had to settle for a half in the seventh as Amo deadheated with The Achiever (Dwayne Dunn).
And Peter Ng Bik-kuen's Dashing Champion took a clear lead in the Happy Valley Million Challenge when he became the first horse to win two races in the series after a brilliant ride from apprentice Paul Lo Pak-hin.
The four-year-old is an appropriate leader in the series, having won five of his seven runs at the Valley and finished first past the post on one other occasion when he was defeated in a protest. The horse who beat him in that objection was The Achiever, who also gained his first points in the Challenge.
