JUST a solitary barrier trial on the Sha Tin all-weather surface yesterday morning but there looked to be a future winner, or possibly even two, on show. The lonely trial reflected the marathon session on Tuesday when nine were run off down the straight 1,000-metre course. All the same it looked a most informative heat yesterday morning with Stephen Leung's Happy Cheers confirming some decent trackwork. The New Zealand import is, like his trainer, in his first season and has been rated to a mark of 67 in Class Three. The basic rule with backing these first-season imports is that any of them rated into Class Three have been given that extra chance of winning early on in their career. It is much, much harder to win first-up in Class Two. Recent first-up Class Three winners which spring readily to mind include Wind Dancer and Bayview Boy while the wily John Moore took advantage of a voluntary demotion to send Super Bomb out for a winning debut in Class Three. Happy Cheers is also the right type on paper to do well here as he only had two starts in New Zealand and is therefore open to plenty of improvement. The miles are not on the clock. He ran fourth in a minor maiden event over 1,100 metres and then won over 1,200 metres on heavy ground in a similar minor event, scoring by three quarters of a length at the end of September. He has been doing plenty of work over the last six weeks under Leung's guidance and in one earlier, revealing piece, worked equally as well as Link Treasure who was a comfortable Class Three winner for the stable last weekend. Three weeks ago he also worked very strongly on the grass and should lack nothing in fitness when it comes to his racecourse debut. Yesterday he was always on the speed and was not knocked about when challenged by the hard-ridden Optic World in the final 50 metres. The overriding impression was that he could have won, had his rider so desired. Just behind Happy Cheers his stablemate Lucky Record was also noted putting in a promising trial effort. Lucky Record lost his form last season but he did very well in Class Three for Bruce Hutchison the campaign before that and has now slipped right down the weights to such an extent that he can race in Class Five. He could just run well at good odds for Leung who recently took over his training and has a potentially well handicapped individual. It could also pay dividends to make a note of Alex Wong Siu-tan's lightly-raced first-season import, Fook Well. He is a very similar type to Happy Cheers in that he has good natural speed and that is so important in racing Hong Kong style where they tend to go fast early, then slow up and then quicken again. Horses without early speed get behind, are boxed in for a run when the field slows up and don't make ground and then have a mountain to climb when the leaders kick again. This is one of the reasons that Basil Marcus' tactics of being up on the speed in most of his races pay such handsome dividends. Yesterday Fook Well was not troubled to share the early running with Happy Cheers but just got tired over the final 200 metres which was not surprising as he hasn't done that much work at all. But he showed enough to suggest he will be going close to winning in his first season, especially as he is rated on 69 at the bottom of Class Two and can take a voluntary demotion into Class Three. Like Happy Cheers, he only ran twice before coming to Hong Kong, improving on the second occasion to run second at Randwick over 1,200 metres on good ground though this was for non-metropolitan winners. He is bred to stay a mile so his natural speed is a bonus.