This season, Whyte has won 12 of his 27 rides for the Yip stable, most of them at the Valley, and he returned a perfect record when he scored with Oriental and Jolly Gains in his two rides for the camp last night.

Yip finished with a treble, after having opened the meeting with Dolphin Star's hollow Class Five victory under French rider Dominic Boeuf, and his success at Happy Valley has become a regular factor in the past 18 months.

'I don't know why my horses seem to do better at this track than Sha Tin - maybe the class is a bit weaker here,' Yip said. 'But some horses just prefer this course and so naturally I aim them here. It isn't always easy to get a run because there are just 12 horses a race and only eight races, so it takes a bit of careful planning.'

Whyte finally added impressive last-race winner Our Jet for Danny Shum Chap-shing for his second successive treble at the Valley and all memory of his recent dry spell has been completely obliterated in a week.

'Actually, I'm delighted to win my first for Danny Shum. We've had a great association back to when I did a lot of riding for Ivan Allan and Danny was his assistant and it's great to get one home for him,' Whyte said. 'He's a nice horse [Our Jet] and I think there might be a bit more to come yet.'

Unusually, Whyte had never had so much as partnered Oriental in a gallop before he climbed on to win the Class Four third in what will not be the last win for the lightly raced four-year-old.

'The key was probably the inside draw - I dug him up early and put him in the race and never left the fence,' the jockey explained.

'But he showed plenty of courage to win. The second horse Smart Win had a break on me and there was not a lot of room to go up inside him. But Oriental didn't shirk the task and that was not a bad win at all.'

No-one was more surprised by Dolphin Star's five-length victory in the 1,800-metre event to open the night than Yip, although he was confident of a good showing.

'I didn't think he could win like that,' he said. 'But if you look at his other two runs at Happy Valley, they were his best runs and Dolphin Star was finishing strongly in the 1,650-metre races. Tonight they went quite a fast pace in the race and I think that certainly helped him.'

Boeuf's celebrations were somewhat short-lived afterwards though, as stewards took exception to his riding in the run to the winning post the first time around and handed out a three-day careless riding ban.

The penalty takes effect after this weekend's Stewards' Cup meeting, but the timing will hit Boeuf hard as he had been booked for Tony Cruz-trained Raider the following week in the Group Three Centenary Vase.

John Size-trained Fortune Smiles backed up from his win over 1,650 metres last Wednesday with an even better one to take the 1,800-metre sixth event last night, with no sign of his previous tendency to over-race.

'You'd hope to see him coming here and not pulling like at Sha Tin. He was a bit better last week but he was much better tonight and is obviously taking to the place,' Size said. 'He left himself with plenty of energy to finish off the race tonight.'

So too did Ricky Yiu Poon-fie's improving three-year-old Great Idea in the second race and connections might have stumbled on the best way to ride the gelding last night.

More slowly out of the gates than in his previous run at Sha Tin, Great Idea (Robbie Fradd) settled off the speed before swallowing up the leaders quickly in the straight.

'Robbie said this is definitely the right way to ride the horse,' Yiu said. 'He enjoyed all the speed on tonight, handled the Valley well and looks an improving horse.'