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Murray Bell

In-form trainer passes single-season earnings mark ... and there are still 20 meetings to go

The Tony Cruz bandwagon rolled into Sha Tin yesterday and steamrolled another record, with his double from seven runners breaking the all-time single-season benchmark for prizemoney in Hong Kong.

Cruz was also the previous record holder, having erased John Size's name from the record books last season when his team won 59 races and $90.4 million in prizemoney.

In the new term, Cruz has been a revelation. Living up to his promise to be 'peddle to the metal' from day one, he has now created a new prizemoney standard - $91.2 million with a bullet - from just 58 meetings, with another 20 still to be decided before the summer break.

The champion trainer-in-waiting was in fine form after Felix Coetzee had brought favourite Wind Winner ($22.50) with a perfectly timed run to win the final event, the Midlands Renowned Investors Handicap.

'I'm very happy to be able to achieve this record and the exciting thing is there's a lot of the season to go. I guess you could say I'm in Cruz control,' he  laughed.

The stable double took Cruz's amazing season to 72 winners, 13 clear of his previous best season when he finished second to John Size in the title chase in 2003-04. He needs just one more winner to equal Size's modern-day record of 73 winners, the most anyone has trained since the Jockey Club placed a 60-horse ceiling on each stable back in 1990.

However, he is also in with a huge chance to break Hong Kong's only 'unbreakable' record - George Moore's 87 winners, set in 1980 when he was the former colony's dominant trainer and had a large pool of horses to draw on.

Cruz's two-from-seven afternoon also propelled his incredible strike rate forward a fraction, with his winning tally having been achieved from just 343 runners at a strike-rate of exactly 21 per cent.

Exactly where Cruz's season will end up, in terms of both numbers and prizemoney haul, is anyone's guess, but he's undoubtedly going to set a stakes benchmark that will be enduring, with Silent Witness, Bullish Luck, Russian Pearl and Perfect Partner all heading for feature races in the coming weeks.

Wind Winner has now won four of his 11  starts and has been a reformed animal since Cruz made two changes - one major and one more subtle.

'This horse is a colt and his attitude was all wrong,' Cruz said. 'He would rear up in his box and want to strike, and horses doing that can be quite dangerous. What he needed was some discipline. He needed to be taught some respect.'

Wind Winner's medicine was strictly of the corporal variety, and after Cruz won the battle of strength with the New Zealand-bred bay, he opted for one final tweak to his racing gear - the addition of side winkers.

'He wasn't concentrating at all, he was full of himself,' said Coetzee. 'But when we put the side winkers on, he got his focus back and that's been the difference.'

Michael Rodd, on runner-up Art Trader, later told trainer John Moore that he'd followed Wind Winner throughout and had been confident the British import would pick up the favourite when he popped the question. Coetzee, however, said the spirit of competition had been just what Wind Winner wanted.

'All the way, he was just waiting on me,' Coetzee said. 'When I pulled him out and the other horse came at him, that was it - he picked up a gear and went right on with it.'

Coetzee and Cruz earlier combined to land the class five handicap with Mr Genki who, although a bay, is a horse of an entirely different colour.

'He hasn't been an easy horse to get right,' Cruz said. 'It's like human beings, they mature at different rates - every horse is different.

'This horse has been slow to mature but now he's getting stronger, both physically and mentally, he's coping much better.

'He only has one speed and that's why we decided to ride him aggressively in front. He'll keep going at that speed, but if you ride him more patiently, he'll just stay back there going slow.'

Mr Genki is one of the stable's few contenders in the bottom grade but Cruz said it had been worth the effort to win a race for owner Chu Nin-yiu, whom he described as 'a personal friend'.

'He's been very patient with this horse and I was determined to win a race for him,' Cruz said. 'Now that he's broken through, who knows, maybe he can win another one in class four.'



Cruz pockets yet another record