Secret Of Winning ready to rumble
Just two days after two of the most promising horses in his yard skipped to effortless wins on a Group One day, Dennis Yip Chor-hong unveiled another bright light at yesterday's Sha Tin barrier trials.
Secret Of Winning, an unraced Australian-bred three-year-old by Invincible Spirit, was the most impressive winner of the morning in taking out a turf trial over 800m under the guidance of Terry Wong Chi-wai.
The youngster began quickly, from barrier four, was too keen in the early stages but eventually settled better and travelled like a winner before the field hit the course proper.
In the final 300m, there was only going to be one winner and Secret Of Winning went strongly to the line to score by three-quarters of a length in a smart 47.59 seconds from another talented youngster, the John Size-trained Super Surveys (Felix Coetzee).
The gelding ran smart sectional times, despite not being fully extended by Wong in the final stages. He demonstrated a long stride and a good, clean action, and will be hard to beat when Yip decides he's ready to go to the races.
Secret Of Winning hails from Melbourne, where he won a trial on the artificial track at Geelong last August by four lengths.
His sire, Invincible Spirit, took all before him in Europe. His first crop featured a world record 35 individual winners, four individual Stakes winners and Euro1.1 million (HK$11.77 million) in earnings, leaving some expensive and high-profile sires in his wake. His service fee subsequently increased from Euro10,000 to Euro35,000 in 2007.
One trial later, one of this year's international sales griffins got the chance to strut his stuff and Redoute's Choice colt Dashing Victory, trained by Peter Ng Bik-kuen, did a professional job in landing heat five.
The two-year-old ran the same time as Secret Of Winning in scoring by 11/2 lengths from Fortune King under a gentle ride from Vincent Sit Shun-keung.
