Hong Kong: Blaze Warrior, pair of Class 1s top final Sha Tin card of season
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A pair of Class 1 handicaps and a third start from the exciting 3-year-old Blaze Warrior highlight Sunday’s final Sha Tin race card of the 2020-21 Hong Kong season.
The 11-race program starts earlier than usual, 12:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday night. You can catch all the action at DRFBets.com.
The Class 1s, both for horses rated 115-90, are races 8 and 10, the earlier heat carded for 1,600 meters, race 10 over 1,200 meters.
Lucky Express is favorably weighted, well drawn in post 5, has top-level connections in trainer John Size and jockey Joao Moreira, and looks very live in race 8. Lucky Express ran through all three legs of the Four-year-old Classic Series this season, performing worse the longer the races got. Eighth over 1,800 meters in the Hong Kong Classic Cup, Lucky Express was 10th going 2,000 meters in the Hong Kong Derby. But racing 1,600 meters, Sunday’s trip, he rallied effectively to finish second in the Hong Kong Classic Mile. Size tried him over 1,400 meters on June 20 in a Class 2 handicap at Sha Tin, Lucky Express coming up a nose short of victory while giving 10 pounds to the horse who beat him. Sunday, he carries 121 pounds, getting as much as 12 pounds from top-rated Champions Way.
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Champions Way, also trained by Size, has been racing competitively in Hong Kong group stakes competition but could only manage a third-place finish in his last Class 1 handicap start, a 1,600-meter contest on March 13 in which Champions Way carried 124 pounds, nine fewer than his Sunday assignment.
Green Luck has won two out of his last four for leading trainer Caspar Fownes, but all his recent form came at Happy Valley. Reliable Team, a reliable front-runner, went wire to wire at Sha Tin the last time he raced over 1,600 meters.
Hinchinlove, the horse who got 10 pounds and nipped Lucky Express on June 2, returns in the other Class 1, cutting back a furlong to race over 1,200 meters. He carries 113 pounds, 20 fewer than top-rated Computer Patch, as does the sneaky Size-trained, Moreira-ridden contender Shining Ace, who has come back into better form his last two starts.
Computer Patch could be undone by weight but has made nine of his 11 starts this season in group stakes competition and should be formidable racing on the front-end Sunday.
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Blaze Warrior goes in the card’s finale, a Class 3 handicap at 1,400 meters, and surely will be favored for Size and Moreira. An Australian-bred 3-year-old by Sebring, Blaze Warrior won his career debut in Class 4 company by 1 1/4 lengths on June 13, and back at the same level and 1,200-meter distance on June 23, he rolled home by more than three lengths despite a 133-pound impost. Blaze Warrior tries Class 3 and 1,400 meters for the first time and breaks from post 1 with the potential to close out the season’s racing at Sha Tin with fireworks.