Don't be giving up on Hong Kong's glamour stayer Vengeance Of Rain because of his unplaced run behind the Tony Cruz-trained Fokine in Sunday's National Day Cup.
The Zabeel gelding finished his race closer to the outside rail than the inner, and was only 41/4 lengths from the winner when the judge called a halt.
Jockey Anthony Delpech gave an instructive interview afterwards, when he reminded us that Vengeance Of Rain's spring campaign had originally been geared towards the Cox Plate in Melbourne on October 22.
Now that's exactly 50 days before the running of the $18 million Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Cup, his new target race since connections decided to abandon the trip to Victoria for Australia's premier weight-for-age race.
Delpech made the point that trainer David Ferraris had been putting the miles into Vengeance Of Rain in a bid to get him ready for a 2,040 metres race first-up, and it's not how he would have been trained if there had been no southern hemisphere race in mind.
The explanation sits nicely with us, and logically accounts for the lack of speed showed by Vengeance Of Rain in the early stages, and the difficulty he had picking up under topweight of 133 pounds when Delpech asked the hard questions.
Winning Premier class races in Hong Kong under 133 pounds does not happen very often, with the last two to do it being the great Fairy King Prawn (2001) and Super Kid earlier this year. So negatively judging Vengeance Of Rain so early here would definitely be too harsh.