Class 2 feature at Sha Tin tough to figure

No one is in cracking form, there are no obviously improving horses, and the featured eighth race Sunday at Sha Tin Racecourse is a real handicapping slog.

Eleven are entered in this Class 2 handicap open to horses rated 100-80. The race is carded at 1,800 meters, about 1 1/8 miles, and is run out of a chute at the head of the backstretch and around one right-handed turn. Post time for the feature is 4:35 a.m. Eastern on a 10-race, spectator-free card starting at 1 a.m. Eastern.

These Class 2s generally are stocked with a mix of Hong Kong veterans and younger horses on the rise, but the latter group here doesn’t seem to be rising fast. You’d like to get behind a horse like Thinkin Big, a Group 3 winner and Group 1-placed before being exported from Australia. He managed but one start during his first Hong Kong season, racing poorly last June, and his veterinary history posted on the Hong Kong Jockey Club website lists a suspensory ligament injury diagnosed last September. Thinkin Big was absurdly overmatched in his last start, the Group 1 Champions Mile on April 26, and actually performed creditably to finish only 9 ¼ lengths behind the winner, Southern Legend. But his comeback run the race before was abysmal, a fading last-place finish at this class level after which his jockey reported concern with Thinkin Big’s action.

Four-year-old Arrogant was among the better 3-year-olds in New Zealand during 2019 and hardly can do any worse Sunday than in his Hong Kong debut last weekend. Granted, Arrogant was probably in need of a race, and was checked sharply around the far turn while at the back of a Class 1 field considerably stronger than Sunday’s race. Arrogant gets an added 400 meters distance after going 1,400 first up, but after finding his stride following trouble last time, he failed to catch the eye.

At the top of the ratings sits Butterfield, whose mark of 94 means he carries 131 pounds, giving as much as 13 pounds to his opponents. Butterfield finished sixth, beaten 3 ½ lengths at odds of 9-2, in his most recent start in a Class 2 on April 26, but a cutback in distance from 2,000 meters to 1,600 meters there might have done Butterfield no favors. When he last raced raced over 1,800 meters, on Feb. 2 at Sha Tin, Butterfield won at this class level, albeit under 120 pounds.

Four-year-old Super Oasis in his first season of Hong Kong racing has only managed to improve his rating three points, from 88 to 91, during a six-start campaign that began in December.

Enrichment sports contending form, but every racing jurisdiction houses horses that prefer running with the herd rather than in front of them, and Enrichment is just 1 for 25 during his Hong Kong career and is working on a string of four straight second-place finishes. If there was a spot for him to break through, this might be it.