Beauty Flash cashes in on favourite's misfortune

The dramatic late scratching of Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Mile favourite Able One may have cost the Jockey Club more than HK$30 million in turnover - but it also paved the way for connections of the Tony Cruz-trained Beauty Flash to claim an international Group One and the lion's share of the HK$16 million purse.

Aided by a lack of on-pace opposition, master French rider Gerald Mosse camped outside perennial Hong Kong champion Douglas Whyte (Sight Winner) through the early stages of the race and, after pinching cheap early sectionals, the pair destroyed the chances of any horse needing to make ground in the straight.

'He has always run his best races when he has been allowed to go forward and dictate the early speed,' Mosse said. 'When Able One was scratched, and we got outside Sight Winner so easily, I knew he was going to be the winner.

'At one stage I actually thought we might have gone too slow, because he doesn't have a great turn of foot, so I went early and built his speed coming into the straight to make sure nothing would catch us.

'All credit must go to Tony for getting this horse to peak on the right day, and I'm so happy to be able to be part of another local Hong Kong Mile win.'

Mosse, who won the Mile on Jim And Tonic in 1998, booted last year's Group One Classic Mile winner away from the pack to record a three-quarter length win over fast-finishing Royal Bench with Sahpresa nailing third ahead of the dead-heat fourth placegetters, A Shin Forward and Rajsaman.

'It was all a matter of timing Beauty Flash to peak for this race,' Cruz said. 'He was 100 per cent spot on today and I knew I had to tread a fine balance between pushing him too hard and giving him too easy a time in his lead-up races.