Following Oriental Express' Queen Elizabeth II Cup triumph on Sunday it was Starlight Express, who also races in the famous purple silks with the gold stars of owner Larry Yung Chi-kin, who went into the notebook after yesterday's Sha Tin trackwork session.
Starlight Express has run well in defeat on both his past two outings which have come at 1,400 metres. He's battled on gamely but found the trip on the short side and just been done for speed over the last 300 metres.
But defending champion Ivan Allan, who is set to give David Hayes a real fright in their tussle for training supremacy, now has Starlight Express in over 1,900 metres this weekend.
It remains to be seen whether he'll run but yesterday's work, with Starlight Express coming through his last quarter in 23.3 seconds under the demon Douglas Whyte, should leave the youngster in tip-top condition.
It was a typical Allan piece. An easy 800 metres overall with Starlight Express and Zippalanda being asked to pick up but not over-exert in the latter stages of their hitout.
Zippalanda starts in tonight's opening griffin event and is worth watching with interest.
He may not be able to cope with the likes of Fast Win, Divine Prospect or his own stablemate Plenty-Plenty who clocked such a good Topspeed figure when going down by the shortest of short-heads to Proud Salute over the Valley's 1,200 metres last time out, but he does look to be capable and is improving all the time. The other thing about these Allan youngsters is that their mentor is such a good buyer of a horse.
