Trainer David Hayes has gone for a gear change for All Thrills Too and Andy Leung Ting-wah has resisted doing the same for Cheerful Fortune as the pressure mounts to secure places in next month's $10 million Hong Kong Sprint.
Tomorrow's International Sprint Trial, over the same territory as the big one on December 14, will effectively determine the identity of Hong Kong's representatives in the 14-horse field in three weeks time.
Hayes has reinstated the blinkers on last year's Hong Kong Sprint hero All Thrills Too, who has not won since becoming the first-ever Hong Kong-trained international Group One winner on home soil.
He will be ridden tomorrow by stand-in jockey Dwayne Dunn, who has handled the chestnut in all recent gallops since the suspension of Hayes' number one jockey, Gerald Mosse.
'He wore the blinkers about four gallops back, on the grass with Baby King, but he has not worn them in his last few pieces of work,' Dunn said. 'It's hard for me to say whether he's going as well now as prior to last year's International Sprint, because I wasn't riding him at that time. But his work this week has certainly been good - he looks and feels very well.'
Leung is excited about Cheerful Fortune's debut in Group company, after a brilliant spell of racing which has yielded five wins from six starts.
