Stable jockey Darren Beadman has faced tough choices and some that have gone the wrong way ever since he joined the John Moore yard, and Admiration could add to the list of the painful ones in the Group Three Chinese Club Challenge Cup (1,400m) today.
Other jockeys might call it a good problem to have, but the pressure to get it right when Beadman chooses between multiple stable runners in high-class races must keep the jockey awake at times. This is one of those times.
Beadman stays on last-start winner Captain Sweet, one of four runners for Moore, and it would have been no easy choice to make between him and the other top-class four-year-old, Admiration (Brett Prebble), who coincidentally has also drawn next to him.
Both horses will be looking to use the traditional New Year's Day sprint feature as a springboard into the four-year-old Group Ones, which commence with the Classic Mile in just over three weeks.
Admiration races in the same ownership as Scintillation, who won this as a five-year-old in 2006, and he and Captain Sweet have had fairly similar profiles for much of their careers with Moore having done a good a job to keep them apart until now.
But the time comes when their options have narrowed so they have to meet and there looks little to separate the pair in this event, a race Moore has not won since Northern Tide 22 years ago.
While Captain Sweet comes to the race as a last-start winner on international day in Class One, Admiration drops back in class from the Hong Kong Sprint, where he wore blinkers for the first time and drew out.
