A Sha Tin double is pretty much standard fare for champion jockey Douglas Whyte but a scoreline of two wins and four seconds on any given afternoon makes the perfectionist in him angry.
Undoubtedly a big part of Whyte's roaring success over nine seasons in Hong Kong is his burning desire to win, a hunger for success that is impossible to sate. But whenever his second placings outnumber his winners, you just know there'll be a dissatisfied Durban Demon to be interviewed.
And so it was. After a peerless ride on Packing Angel from gate 13 at the tricky 1,650m start on the all-weather track in the ninth event, Whyte admitted to a loud expletive after the eight-year-old came up a short head shy of victory.
'That was really galling, because I'd done just about everything possible for him,' Whyte said. 'He didn't need to draw barriers one or two to win, even eight or nine would have done. But 13 just made it that much more difficult. I cut back in at the start and got one off the fence, tracked into the race nicely and got into the clear at just the right time. But in the end it was simply the big weight difference - he had 133 [pounds] while the winner [Present Treasure] had 120.'
While it might not have been the stuff of nightmares, Whyte wasn't happy his mount Wait For Me went down to Brett Prebble's mount Kiwi Dash in the second event either.
'A very similar story,' Whyte said. 'When they slowed up, I made the split-second decision to pull out and go early. It was the right move, but Brett tracked me every inch of the way and ultimately the weights told the tale again, my horse had 131 and Brett's 128. It was only a short head the difference.'
Add the last-gasp defeat on Paul O'Sullivan's Smarty Face in the fourth, after the gelding looked home and hosed, and his every-chance second on Celebration in the ninth, and Whyte's buttons were being pushed big time.
