The wins of Victory Code and Hawkes Bay at Sha Tin last Saturday were significant because the prevailing conditions did not allow either horse to perform to his best.
David Hall is the trainer for both these consistent young gallopers and the upside to each performance is that the horses will only get better once the tracks soften.
Victory Code, a handsome black son of the underrated Mr Prospector stallion Faltaat, has now raced seven times. After taking a while to understand his job, the penny has now well and truly dropped and he has won three of his past four starts.
However, taking a line through what he had been doing in his earlier wins, Victory Code should - in theory, at least - have put these horses away a little more easily.
The hard ground seems to be the answer to the riddle. Here, as it had been at the Champions Mile meeting six days earlier, the track condition was a legitimate good-to-firm, and racing on such ground is not necessarily ideal for all horses.
Victory code did not seem to be stretching right out for Brett Prebble and it was only the persistence of the Australian rider to make him do it that gained the result.