Maturity brings best out of Natural
While two Group One races stole the headlines at Sha Tin, Natural Nine confirmed his status as a promising horse in the lower grades with a comprehensive win in the Super Kid Handicap.
The remarkable thing about Natural Nine is not so much his progress, which was fairly easy to project after his promising early form in the first quarter of 2006, highlighted by a solid win at his fourth start under the guidance of Chris Munce.
It's that Natural Nine has been able to make such a strong comeback after suffering a bleeding attack in March last year.
Not only has he recaptured the form that he'd shown before, he's well and truly surpassed it.
One of the keys to helping horses cope and avoid the disasters of internal haemorrhaging is getting them to properly relax, and this is clearly where trainer Caspar Fownes has won the battle with Natural Nine.
In his early days, Natural Nine wanted to fight against his riders and was getting just too excited and stirred up for his own good.
But one year down the track, with all the maturity that growing up can bring, Natural Nine is a reformed character.
He's relaxing out the back in his races and saving his energy to be put to proper use in the drive to the finishing line.
Natural Nine's performance on Sunday has come in a high-rating race - one where runner-up Fair Win would have scored in 95 out of 100 runnings of Class Three handicaps like this.
Fair Win's performance speed rating increased predictably here, yet he was still beaten because Natural Nine improved a little more.
Butterfield (third) and Sanbenito (fourth) give us good benchmark horses because each has run their race, measured on current form, and recorded the same level of performance as previously. Fair Win's form has also been a credit to new trainer David Hall, who took the gelding over after the retirement of David Oughton in November. The gelding has come solid and will certainly break through in the coming weeks.
The good news is that Fair Win is also extremely adept on rain-affected surfaces, so whenever the rains come he'll be right in business.
Hall is having his best season since moving from Melbourne in 2004 and deserves further credit for finally getting a win from Egyptian Ra.
This erratic fellow came from New Zealand as a maiden three-year-old but had been placed in each of the two Group Ones for juveniles in that country.
He was placed eight more times before breaking through on Sunday, his first win in a total of 30 attempts.
