The John Moore-trained Packing Ok lived up to his early promise yesterday with a breakthrough Group Three win in the Centenary Vase (1,800m), but his trainer fears the hard work will begin now.
Packing Ok (Darren Beadman) got a perfect trip throughout the race to pounce on the lead inside the 200m and turn the tables on runner-up Pure Champion (Gerald Mosse), who had got over the top of him in the January Cup at Happy Valley.
Packing Ok again got first run on the Tony Cruz-trained topweight, but the five-pound turn-around in the weights was enough to see him prevail by the same half-length margin by which he had been defeated last time, with Sapelli (Douglas Whyte) just nosed out of second.
'That's great. He has always looked like a horse with a decent race in him and today looked like one that he could win. He got the right pace, the ideal ride from Darren and he was well weighted with respect to Pure Champion from the last run at the Valley and it all fell into place,' said a delighted Moore, who had won the race four times previously, with Mighty High and Beadman 12 months ago, and with Stingray (1989), Survey King (1996) and Super Kid (2006) before that.
All of those horses were already or became Group One performers, but Moore has reservations about where Packing Ok sits in the overall scheme of things.
'He won't have any options now but to run in the Gold Cup and those sorts of Group One races and to my mind he's just two or three lengths behind the very best ones,' Moore said. 'He's going to run his good fourths or fifths, and he can pick up some good prize money doing that, but he's going to be tough to place where he can win.'