Champion jockey Douglas Whyte still has the door open to his century of wins after a treble took him to the verge of his best-ever Hong Kong season.
Whyte racked up Dragon And Gold, Amazing Victory and Scintillation to take him to just three wins away from his previous best 89 victories, but he agreed the century was tantalisingly 'doable'.
'It's an interesting one - 10 meetings to go and I need 14 wins. It's doable, but it's still a decent sort of mountain to climb,' Whyte observed. 'As I've said many times, I'll just ride my horses, race by race, and won't be thinking about the hundred.'
No horse at Sha Tin yesterday looked any more promising than Ivan Allan's Scintillation in the last race, and even the maestro trainer grimaced at his approaching retirement and the transfer of Scintillation to Danny Shum Chap-shing.
'I'm almost a bit sad not to be training him next year,' said Allan. 'He could turn into a champion miler as a four-year-old for Danny.'
Scintillation will be the winner of the $1 million bonus for the best-performed 2002 Hong Kong International Sale horse after taking his prizemoney to just under $2.8 million yesterday.
'I've only bought four horses at the sale here and two of them have turned out to be top class - Billion Win and this horse,' Allan said after what might have been a watershed win for the gelding, who had been headstrong in the past but came from behind to win yesterday.