Hong Kong: Top trainers Fownes and Size square off in Class 2 at Happy Valley

Caspar Fownes and John Size battled for the 2020-21 Hong Kong training title, Fownes coming out on top with 79 winners, seven more than Size. The 2021-22 Hong Kong season is nearly two months old and this term Fownes and Size are tied for 13th in the training ranks; Fownes has gone 4 for 95 and Size is 4 for 87.

There are no super trainers in Hong Kong – Size’s 14 percent strike rate last season topped the training colony – but these are low win percentages even by Hong Kong standards. Yet they are understandable to some degree. There’s not nearly the same sort of seasonal stable turnover in Hong Kong, which has no breeding program, as in most other racing jurisdictions there. And with the handicap system that governs race planning, winning with a horse means the horse must carry more weight or rise to a higher class in its following start. Win a lot of races, like Size and Fownes did, and you have a lot of horses potentially facing challenging competition.

The two trainers, in any case, have runners in the featured fifth race Wednesday a Happy Valley, a good Class 2 handicap over 1,800 meters (about 1 1/8 miles) open to horses rated 100-80.

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Size has two entrants, Savaquin with jockey Joao Moreira and Beauty Fit with Victor Borges, with Savaquin looking the more likely win threat. Beauty Fit makes his first start of the season for a trainer who likes to build incrementally toward peaks, and Savaquin already has two recent starts behind him. Eleventh in his comeback run over 1,650 meters at Happy Valley, Savaquin finished eighth last out in a Sha Tin Class 2 at 1,800 meters. Maybe that means Savaquin, rated 93 at his peak last season, isn’t the same horse as a year ago, but what it definitely means is that Savaquin carries less weight Wednesday, going from 127 pounds to 121. In his lone start last season under these same conditions, Savaquin closed strongly to finish second, and an improved performance can be expected now.

The Fownes-trained Zebrowski was Group 2-placed in Australia before being exported to Hong Kong, where he got in three starts, all at Sha Tin, during the 2020-21 season. The last start was the best, Zebrowki setting the pace in a Sha Tin 1,800-meter Class 2 before being pipped at the wire. This marks his Happy Valley debut but Fownes knows as well as anyone which horses might fit this unconventional racecourse.

Top-rated Savvy Nine, a French-bred 5-year-old, won Happy Valley’s biggest race last season, the Group 3 January Cup over 1,800 meters. Rated 100, he carries top weight Wednesday while giving his rivals between six and 17 pounds, a spread that would be greater but for the presence of three-pound apprentice jockey Jerry Chau. Savvy Nine, trained by Douglas Whyte, finished seventh in his first start this season in a race like Wednesday’s; maybe he needed the run, but Savvy Nine finished a competitive second in his 2020-21 debut.

Tony Cruz starts two from his stable, Delightful Laos and Berlin Tango. Delightful Laos went over the top late last spring and summer but had a very productive December and January last season at Happy Valley, albeit in races at 1,650 meters.

First post for this eight-race card is 7:15 a.m. Eastern. Catch all the action at DRFBets.com.