Jockeys might become heroes by riding the Group One winners but often it is the lowest-class races that really require their greatest skills and one of Joao Moreira's best performances in his five-timer yesterday was to just get Sledge Hammer around in the first race.
The Class Five dirt specialist has, by trainer Danny Shum Chap-shing's admission, "the worst mouth of any horse I've trained" and that makes him very difficult to steer around one turn, let alone the two turns he had ahead to negotiate going up to 1,650m for the first time.
"Actually, Zac Purton, who has won on this horse before, was ribbing me before the race and asking if I was ready to get him to turn twice," said Moreira later.
And it was Purton's knowledge of Sledge Hammer that might have helped him to win.
"When we came past the winning post the first time, I was on one rein trying to hold my horse against the fence and Zac was racing outside me. He knew that if Sledge Hammer started to leave the fence that his horse would get run right off the track, too, so he kept Southchina Command a neck in front of me so there was enough weight there to keep my horse in. He is a really difficult ride so two turns was always going to be tricky but other than that the move to 1,650m looked a good idea."
Safely around into the home straight, Sledge Hammer balanced up and quickly swallowed the leader Lucky Bole in the final 100m for his third race win - all of them from barrier one so he had the rail to guide him.
"When Danny said to me he would take the horse from 1,200m to 1,650m I was all in favour of it because he doesn't have much tactical speed at 1,200m and the slower pace today allowed the horse to travel better," Moreira said.
That was the opening salvo from Moreira, who collected a second win for Shum on the more upwardly mobile Athena Baby three races later, then added a John Size double with Dehere's The Love and Sergeant Titanium before finishing with a flourish when Arpinati won the Hong Kong Macau Trophy.
The five wins took him to 11 in eight days at Sha Tin, and the Magic Man is just 14 short of breaking what was once a magical century mark with 35 meetings of the season still to go.
