Co-featured handicaps hard to decipher

A pair of Class 2 handicaps highlight the Sunday action at Sha Tin Racecourse in Hong Kong.

Race 3 (post time 1:00 a.m. Eastern) is for horses rated 100 to 80 and carded for 2000 meters (about 1 1/4 miles). Race 7 (3:10 a.m. Eastern) is restricted to horses in the same ratings range but is for sprinters at 1200 meters (about six furlongs).

The third is packed with 4-year-olds who’ve only made a handful of Hong Kong starts, none at a distance as far as the Sunday co-feature. The top-rated entrant, Tigre Du Terre, is rated just 87, well below the race’s cap, and the horse at the bottom of the ratings, Grand Chancellor, is an 81 – a tightly packed bunch.

Four horses, among them Tigre du Terre, exit the Hong Kong Classic Mile, first leg of the 4-year-old Championship Series, but none showed very much in that race: Tigre du Terre finished ninth, Charity Go was 10th, Packing Warrior 11th, and Heavenly Thought was 12th. None showed much spark in the race, and it’s hard to say whether any will benefit from the added quarter-mile Sunday. The race’s big ratings riser is Dancing with Dragons, a 5-year-old New Zealand-bred gelding who has won two in a row, the most recent, a Class 3, definitively enough that his rating was raised seven points to 83.

Co-featured race 7 is no stroll in the analytical park, either, with 10 entered to sprint with a ratings range of 81 to 91. Top-rated Saul’s Special isn’t hapless but his two most recent wins came at Happy Valley and he doesn’t appear to be in the sort of form that will carry top weight of 128 pounds, including Karis Teetan, to victory.

But Raging Blitzkrieg, rated 90, can win. Trained by John Size and with Joao Moreira to ride, Raging Blitzkrieg has been kept mainly to the Sha Tin dirt track this season but moved to the turf course and came within a nose of wining a race at this class level and distance, albeit with a perfect trip and in a field of just eight.

Hinchinlove will have Zac Purton aboard for the first time as he seeks his first Hong Kong win in his sixth local start. The 4-year-old Australian-bred took a solid step forward in his most recent start, finishing third of 14 in a 1400-meter race at this level dominated by the very talented Waikuku.

► Beauty Generation pleased his connections with a 1000-meter straight-course turf training race Friday morning at Sha Tin as he prepares to start there Feb. 17 in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup, a race he won a year ago. Beauty Generation is easily Hong Kong’s leading horse this season and is considered one of the top milers ever to race in the jurisdiction. His owners declined a chance to race in the $6 million Dubai Turf on March 30, a trip trainer John Moore wanted to take, in favor of a home-turf campaign.

► South African-born jockey Douglas Whyte rides his final Hong Kong card Sunday at Sha Tin, wrapping up a 22-year career in Hong Kong. Whyte, a local legend, won 13 straight riding titles in Hong Kong. He is moving directly into a career as a Hong Kong Jockey Club trainer.