National Day has always been a launchpad for some of the stars of a season still spread out ahead at this early stage and Gold-Fun and Go Baby Go threw down their credentials for the big league as a race-starved populace cheered.
With Typhoon Usagi taking one September race meeting out of the calendar and just five fixtures in that entire month, racing fans surged back into action yesterday in the autumn sunshine, with National Day attendance up and turnover at Sha Tin soaring by almost HK$200 million.
"It's quite incredible," said Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges. "I'm thrilled. The star horses are back and with only a few race meetings lately, I think our fans are loving that."
The main features were full of the same action that was keeping the windows busy, with last season's Classic Mile winner, Gold-Fun, roaring back into action in a brilliant National Day Cup win to confirm him on a path to the internationals in December. Under handicap conditions, Gold-Fun had some advantages but responded with a turn of foot that had trainer Richard Gibson gasping and made jockey Olivier Doleuze a happy man.
"He had that won very quickly. He got bigger and stronger during the off-season and I always thought he'd be better in his second season," Gibson said.
With most of the real international heavyweights, like Ambitious Dragon and Military Attack, missing from the race in preference to the Sha Tin Trophy, Gibson was still choosing his words, if not his direction.
"That was his most impressive run today, now there isn't much choice in the programme - he goes to the race at the end of the month to meet the best Hong Kong has."
Doleuze did a great deal of the foundation work on Gold-Fun last season as well as Derby winner Akeed Mofeed, both owned by Pan Sutong, but the Frenchman was always on the wrong leg as far as getting on them in the right races, with suspensions costing him.
"That's the first race I've won for Mr Pan so that's a relief at last," Doleuze smiled, more than consolation for the race he might have expected to win earlier on Eagle Regiment, who pulled up with internal problems after the Sha Tin Sprint Trophy.
Instead, champion trainer Dennis Yip Chor-hong took that and he was sure this is the season to push the envelope with six-year-old Go Baby Go after Tye Angland guided him to victory, upsetting Eagle Regiment and Frederick Engels down the straight course where he has now won seven times.
"He is stronger this season, more relaxed and I think he can handle 1,200m for sure," Yip said.
But while the heroes were happy, so were many of the beaten as the topliners stretched their legs and blew out cobwebs.
Missing the positive side to the day though was top jockey Matthew Chadwick, who had a frustrating afternoon all round and inadvertently "summoned the fire brigade" when he took his defeat on Cup favourite Bullish Champion to heart, and broke a fire alarm near the jockeys' room with his whip.
Stewards relieved him of HK$5,000 - and ordered him to pay for the repairs.
