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Alan Aitken

Champion trainer elect has turned a previously difficult  customer into one of the form horses of the moment

Perhaps no single horse can properly represent the season that champion-trainer-in-waiting Tony Cruz is having but the form turnaround in last night's Happy Valley feature winner, Nilometer, probably serves as a worthwhile indicator.

Nilometer came into this season, even this year, without a placing to his name since his arrival in Hong Kong, but Cruz has worked the oracle with the former French horse just as he has with so many of his charges.

'When Nilometer came here he was a colt and as colts go he was a really bad colt,' Cruz explained last night after Nilometer [Felix Coetzee] had made it three wins on the trot in the Hong Kong Exchanges Challenge Cup.

'He would stand in the barriers screaming out, even though there were no mares around. He was continually slow out in his races, couldn't muster any speed early. It was tough.'

But gelding the son of Machiavellian transformed the horse and was the catalyst for a number of changes which have made him one of the form horses in town lately.

'Once he was gelded, his attitude began to change and then we could start to work on the starts and his speed,' Cruz said. 'Since we added the side winkers to him, he's led throughout at his last two runs but I was never that keen for him to lead tonight as there looked plenty of speed in the race.'

Coetzee buried Nilometer behind the strong speed of Money Strong, Dashing Champion and Fortune Smiles, railed up around the circle then pounced between them as the frontrunners faded in the final 150 metres.

The win took Cruz to 73 for the season - the number John Size achieved in winning the championship last year - and the former champion jockey is still on target to claim a record number of wins for the season. He needs another 15 in the final 19 meetings to pass George Moore's 25-year-old record from the days when stable numbers were unrestricted.

Shane Dye and Olivier Doleuze shared the riding honours for the night and Dye had some added good news after steering home Golden Mile for Caspar Fownes and Easy Game for Paul O'Sullivan.

With the news that Hong Kong Cup winner Alexander Goldrun will not run in the Audemars Piguet QEII Cup, the Jockey Club is most likely to invite the next highest-rated entry - former Derby winner Elegant Fashion - to contest what might be her farewell race.

Dye spoke to Elegant Fashion's owner, Gene Tsoi Wai-wang, between races last night and is now likely to be aboard the mare should she be invited to start the race in which she finished runner-up at her past two attempts.

With leaders and those drawn inside dominating proceedings last night at Happy Valley, Dye's victory on Easy Game was something of an oddity as both he and runner-up Touch Down made their runs from the rear and down the centre of the track.

'I guess that was one race they might have gone a bit hard but it just shows you have to stick with the right tactics for your horse regardless of the pattern of the track,' O'Sullivan said.

'I have to take some blame for how he went last time. He'd been going well ridden cold but the track here that night was playing a bit leaderish, too, and I asked Shane to try to be a bit handier.

'It didn't work. The horse didn't travel, wanted to hang, everything was wrong. So even with the track looking like leaders tonight, we just decided the horse should be ridden the way he responds to - quietly early - and he was a different horse.'

The other leading jockey was French rider Olivier Doleuze, who continued his blazing season, claiming a double for Sean Woods on Athletic Gold and Green In Blue, to take him to 39 wins for the season and into a clear third in the championship standings.

David Ferraris also continued his momentum, adding Double Pleasure (Craig Williams) in the sixth event to take him to 31 wins for the season. The South African trainer predicted a handy future for the gelding.

'He's by Volksraad so he's taken a bit of time but he's a nice bread-and-butter horse,' Ferraris said.



Nilometer is living proof of the Cruz effect