Archie da Silva and Felix Coetzee spray each other with bubbly at the formal welcome home for Silent Witness and his team. Victory may have been 48 hours old but the owner and jockey of the great sprinter still had that champagne feeling at Sha Tin yesterday afternoon when the Hong Kong Jockey Club gave them the reception.
Jockey Club executive director of corporate development, Kim Mak, and racing secretary Marco Cheng, presided over the 12.30pm ceremony where the international deeds of both Silent Witness and Cape Of Good Hope were acknowledged. This year, the great pair of sprinters have accrued three away wins at Group One level, with Cape Of Good Hope winning the Australia Stakes at Moonee Valley in Melbourne in February and the Queen's Silver Jubilee Stakes at York in June. And on Sunday, Silent Witness added the $12.7 million Sprinters Stakes at Nakayama in Tokyo to his astonishing list of wins. His career record now reads 20 starts for 18 wins, but he's unbeaten at 1,400m or less. Silent Witness will now concentrate on the International Sprint Trial and the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint for the third successive year, while Cape Of Good Hope is off to Victoria for one of the big sprints at Flemington in Melbourne Cup week.
