The achievements of Entrapment and Douglas Whyte aside, the sound of chickens coming home to roost was the prevailing memory of Sunday's racing and the Juvenile Sprint Trophy.
Overall, the 78th meeting was a reminder of why the season used to end at that point with the heavy rain, carved-up track and miserable atmosphere contributing to a whopping HK$130 million hit for the Jockey Club in terms of turnover. If betting is the reason for racing's further incursions into July, it will be of interest to see if punters respond more positively in the remaining fixtures that promise every chance of more of the same from the Weather Gods who care little about who they affect.
The two features totalled only 10 runners - usually considered a poor field for one race. And the Juvenile Sprint itself, a four-horse field, bolstered only by Almond Lee's two maidens as late entries, had a favourite at 1-10 and turnover of HK$19 million. And a whole lot of clucking.
We may never know if Entrapment would have even had his chance at a seventh win had Lee not come to the party and rolled the dice on rehandicapping - two runners usually means scrapping the race.
That chief handicapper Nigel Gray was happy to call it 'intriguing' betrays a strictly western hemisphere, nonsense view of the race. Uncompetitive and pointless would have been a better description and punters voted with their pockets.
We can only assume that a particularly kind rehandicap of Danewin Tiger - up three points for being beaten three-quarters of a length by a horse rated 53 points higher than him and ridden hard to the line - was due the trainer for his assistance in even staging the race. Should we see that as the pre-race fears of trainers being unfounded or merely as a demonstration that they could have been?
There are limits to how much the beaten runners in this situation can be raised, but it isn't three points, so Lee has managed to get away with HK$184,000 in prize money for Danewin Tiger and no more penalty than he might have got for running second in a Class Four (stake money HK$137,500). His other runner, Just Good, grabbed HK$96,000 in stakes and doesn't even have a rating which can be raised. Good luck to him and his owners and too bad he didn't have a third horse to take the HK$56,000 for fifth place, for free.