Happy Lucky Dragon Win | HKIR: The good, the bad and the ugly

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Lord Kanaloa was simply stunning in winning the Hong Kong Sprint for the second year in a row. Photo: Kenneth Chan

Published: 9:09pm, 9 Dec 2013Updated: 12:15pm, 23 Feb 2016

What a day, and what a week. Three wins from four for the locals, just when it seemed the internationals might take the lot. A big-race double for Dougie, a pearler from Purton and a trio of world-class training performances ensured “fortress Sha Tin” remained at least three-quarters intact. Of course, there was that reasonable sprinter Lord Kanaloa – he went all right considering he was only rated the 44th best horse in the world going into the meeting. Let's look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 2013 Longines Hong Kong International Races.

THE GOOD

LORD KANALOA EXPLODES LIKE KRAKATOA

All of the signs were there during the week at trackwork – Lord Kanaloa was going to turn on something special for his racetrack finale. It wasn’t just the low-flying bit of "21s" on the Monday – his traditional race-eve rev-up was something to behold. Trackwork rider Shogo Yasuda had a vice-like grip as the sleek machine powered up the straight on Saturday, slapping the stallion on the shoulder with the whip as he kept him under a double hold. One journalist cleverly described it as “like sitting in a Ferrari in the garage just revving the engine”.

A great thing about blogs is that we don’t need words to describe how the workouts transferred to the track on raceday, we can just watch in awe again as he demolishes the Group One Hong Kong Sprint field, gapping them by five lengths.

Now the gauntlet has been thrown down to the World’s Best Racehorse Rankings committee to give Lord Kanaloa his due. A straw poll among visiting journalists indicated the rankings aren’t held in high regard by many of the sport’s independent experts. The knock is that they pander to the big studs and there is a lack of recognition for Japan, whose horses, even the Group Two-types, seem to perform well in big races wherever they go (e.g. Tokei Halo, a length second in Hong Kong Cup). Giving Lord Kanaloa some more respect in the way of a lofty, top five-in-the-world type rating can restore some confidence in the rankings.