Feeling fit for a Towering season
A break from racing seems to have been the right tonic for Towering Feeling, whose strong barrier trial performance at Sha Tin on Friday suggests he can now complete his march to the top.
Towering Feeling has been a terrific horse for his owners, Jockey Club steward Anthony Chow Wing-kin and Michael Tong Hing-yuen, but even though he has won five of his 10 attempts there seems to be more to come.
In the trial, over 1,200 metres on the all-weather track, Towering Feeling sat around four lengths off the lead, albeit three wide with no cover. Douglas Whyte had him travelling kindly on a long rein and the New Zealand-bred galloper wasn't asked to hit top gear at any stage.
Ultimately, he ran second to stablemate Global Win, whose winning time of 1:10.8 was just 0.1 seconds outside the best of the morning. The margin at the finish was merely 11/4 lengths in favour of Global Win, a renowned all-weather track specialist.
Whyte won the third trial on the impressive United Efforts, trained by Peter Ho Leung. The Irish-bred three-year-old is owned by Ho's 2006-07 Trainer Syndicate and looks like giving the trainer's backers plenty of fun in the coming months.
United Efforts, like Towering Feeling, raced wide and without cover but quickened up smartly, out wide on the track, in the final 150m.
Yesterday there were six trials at Happy Valley and last season's champion trainer Caspar Fownes signalled his clear intention to keep the city venue as his personal happy hunting ground.
Fownes won the second trial with Yankee (Brett Prebble) and the fourth with Top Top Light (Gerald Mosse) and, while each of these horses was driven to the line by their respective riders, it should serve to steel them for the tasks ahead of them in the next few weeks. An interesting performance was turned in by Floral Star, trained by Danny Shum Chap-shing and handled by Howard Cheng Yue-tin.
Floral Star, a gelding by top sire Anabaa, stormed home for second under his own steam as Cheng picked his way between runners in the final 200m.
A positive piece of work was noted from Perfect Time, trained by David Hall and handled by Glen Boss, in the sixth trial. Perfect Time ran nicely from back in the field for third to First Degree (Manoel Nunes) and Fun (Alex Lai Hoi-wing).
