蓮華生輝下季目標冠軍一哩賽
Trainer Ricky Yiu Poon-fai says Sacred Kingdom is “in peak condition” ahead of the GOME Sprint when the four-year-old will round off a season that has seen him acclaimed as the world’s top-ranked sprinter.
Also at the apex of local ratings, Sacred Kingdom will carry 5lbs more than his seven rivals for the May Day feature event, but is still very likely to start at minimum odds on the occasion Howard Cheng Yue-tin takes over riding duties for the first time.
This will be Sacred Kingdom’s seventh race of a campaign highlighted by his destruction of an excellent Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint line-up in December and a comfortable success in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize. However, he also endured two high-profile reverses in the Centenary Sprint Cup and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup.
Looking forward to next season, Ricky Yiu is considering a shot at the Sprinters’ Stakes in Japan before preparing for a defence of his Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint crown.
All going well in the New Year, Yiu said the Champion Sprint Series and the Champions Mile will then enter the reckoning.
“Physically, he is where I want him to be now. But mentally I think he can still improve a little and I think he’ll be a better horse next season as a five-year-old,” Yiu predicted.
Sacred Kingdom’s progress, the trainer added, is reminiscent of the horse he trained to win the Hong Kong Sprint in 1999.
“He reminds me of Fairy King Prawn who was a great sprinter-turned-miler. I think Sacred Kingdom can be a Group 1 miler like him but we will concentrate on the sprints first,” he said.
Whereas Fairy King Prawn twice won the Horse of the Year award at the start of the decade, Yiu appears to have conceded that honour going the way of Sacred Kingdom - for the time being anyway.
“Sacred Kingdom has won two Gr.1 races this season but Good Ba Ba has won four so the numbers aren’t in our favour,” Yiu observed.
“Awards like that are nice, but it’s more important that you can race a horse at the top level for a whole season and still have him one piece and in good form after all that training and racing. We can still look back on a good season and look forward to what hopefully could be even better next year.”
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