John Size produced a masterful training performance to conjure a debut victory from Mirage but admitted his 800th Hong Kong win was less of a milestone and more of a millstone removed from around his neck.
"That's one of the more relieving wins amongst the 800," smiled Size. "Now I can breathe again."
Mirage, in the famous colours of high profile owner Larry Yung Chi-kin, had shown enormous promise in Australia racing as Royal Haunt, unbeaten in three runs, but what wasn't in his formline from those races over a year ago was his almost terminal aversion to the starting gates.
"With any other trainer, he would never have got to the races here," was the summary from jockey Tye Angland, who had been aboard Mirage, then tossed to the ground by him, when the four-year-old was brought out for his intended debut on December 29.
Once he got a look at the starting stalls that day, Mirage was having none of it, and he put Angland and Size through some difficult moments again before winning was almost the easiest part of assignment, for him if not for his trainer.
"He's a very tricky horse - he has some upside, but he has a hair trigger and if you touch it, he goes off," said Angland. "It's just a confidence thing. The horses are under such pressure here all the time - the environment really pushes them and he needs it all to go his way. He needs to be quiet behind the start, and having the pony with him helps, but when Fabulous November went off in the gates and the jockey had to get off, that stirred my bloke up.
"Then he's tricky to get in and if you upset him he'll go off and then he hit the front of the gates and they opened, but luckily they were closed quickly and the starter let the field go immediately."
Once in the race, there were no more issues, Mirage sat second to the home turn then got clear before holding the late finish of Let Me Handle It, but Size said he was never comfortable until the race had ended.
"The process of getting him here was very long-winded and extremely frustrating, but like all things that you put your efforts into, you usually get some reward," he said. "Eventually, it was a matter of giving the horse as much opportunity as we could. He needs a lot of love and there's nothing we can do about that - we just have to keep pandering to him and hoping he'll co-operate."
Since the episode in December, Size had tried a hood and then ear plugs on Mirage in an effort to keep the horse calm.
"I'm not sure what effect the ear plugs have had but he has won in them so they have to get some credit," he said.
"After his late scratching, I gave him three trials and he did everything right. So we had to bite the bullet and take him to the races again, which is what he is supposed to be here for, and I tried to find the weakest race he was eligible for."
All the drama surrounding Mirage, the gates and actually getting him to run at all eclipsed the obvious question with any other horse able to win first-up off a rating as high as 89 - what next?
"Tye thinks he's got potential," Size said. "He was labouring a long way from home, so winning was to his credit. On the home turn, it looked like he would run last, then he fought on when the second horse came to beat him. We never envisaged him as a stayer and I'm not worried about him missing the Derby - the wins in Melbourne were sprints but we were very hopeful that he would run a mile and on today's effort at 1,400m, you'd think he would."
