Numero Uno's suicidal tactics hard to top | HK Racing
So, even this far out, apprentice Dicky Lui Cheuk-yin has made his bid for most egregious ride of the season and good luck to any jockey who thinks he might snatch the award away.
The 1,200m to 800m section of Numero Uno's race on Sunday, covered in 20.69 seconds, is the fastest we can find. That doesn't mean it hasn't been done faster but since our accessible records are only back to September 2004, it certainly hasn't been done in the previous 1,400 runnings of Sha Tin 1,400m races (nice symmetry to those figures).
Numero Uno has set a benchmark that is going to be hard to top without the horse and rider involved actually bursting into flames
In fact, only one other race in that time broke 21 seconds - a Class Three on international day, 2006, went 20.9 seconds with the track surface on fire. So Numero Uno has set a benchmark that is going to be hard to top without the horse and rider involved actually bursting into flames. Numero uno indeed.
Dicky will now face a serious stewards inquiry into his handling of the horse and it will be interesting to know whether the sore shoulder, which he reported immediately afterwards, played a role and how he was instructed to run the race. And what role any discussions of track bias might have played, since bias seemed to be on every lip at the weekend.
Numero Uno's race was not the only one where the leader went too quick, just the crystal-clearest example.
There was once quite a savage on-pace bias on the B+2 track at Sha Tin to assist leaders but the imprinted perception of that has continued on much longer than the actual bias.
On Sunday, the on-pace advantage came into play for leaders only in races where the pace was average or becalmed, which is how it should be if a track is fair. In the fast-run races on Sunday, leaders got buried.
If you did raw statistics on the B+2 course results, you might find a preponderance of winners close to the pace in the last couple of years but what kind of pace?
And there is a natural positive edge to leading in races anyway - bad luck in traffic ceases to be a factor amongst other pluses - something recognised by the great Australian trainer, T. J. Smith and subsequently his daughter Gai Waterhouse, who both made it their hall mark to have horses fit, racing forward and tough to get past.
The simplton interpretation of results is: leaders win equals a bias to them but the fact that leaders win does not mean there is a bias.
The fact that leaders win when they should not, now that's a bias. If the old B+2 bias had been in play on Sunday, for example, Numero Uno would still have won. Well, maybe not won, but he would still have been right in the finish - that's a proper bias. What we have on the B+2 course now generally happens in line with the speed of the races.
Bias was also of interest in the dirt races on the weekend.
A wet-slow on the all weather track virtually always presents a hot rail - even so strong a bias at times that the first three or four across the line will be the horses which race one behind the other along the inside rail and horses which are switched out away from it to make their runs in the straight go up and down on the spot.
Olivier Doleuze is, most seasons, our "winningest" jockey on the dirt surface so it is a reasonable presumption that he knows a thing or two about how it behaves. And it was interesting to note that, in winning both of the dirt events on Sunday he went out of his way to be off the rails.
From gate 10, Croatia had every chance of being out there anyway in the first but it was noticeable that Doleuze made a point - probably 1,200m from home - on his second winner, Good Fit, of getting him away from sitting three back on the inside rail, which would normally be a golden path.
So what does it all mean? A presumed bias on the turf that wasn't there (and usually isn't) and an expected bias on the dirt that wasn't there (and it usually is). Fair racing, go figure. Oh, except for the straight course - it's still a complete debacle. We have to have something to hold on to.
Handicappers in no hurry to reveal Able Friend’s rating
By the way, if you’re wondering where all the hullabaloo went over Able Friend’s Hong Kong Mile win, so were we.
Jockey Club chief handicapper Nigel Gray declared on international day that he would be arguing with his counterparts from around the world for an international mark of 126 or 127 for the half pace Mile win, which would officially make Able Friend’s win the greatest performance ever by a Hong Kong-trained horse.
Given that his counterparts were all in Hong Kong at the time and due to meet the following morning, we had a mental picture of them assembled in a mahogany room, Gray brandishing a shoe Krushchev-style at the other handicappers as he reinforced his point and the decision emerging in quick order.
Jolly good, lively stuff. So that was two weeks ago and still no word, but it seems they haven’t been locked in discussion all this time like some hung jury.
These days, with Longines involved as a sponsor of the world rankings, there is a time and place for these things and the third week of January in London is apparently release time, right in the middle of ... well, nothing really.
Perhaps that is the idea – thinking it’s better to release these things when it’s winter jumps racing in England and those racing folk who can avoid Europe’s winter are making themselves productive in Dubai and there’s no real highlight happening anywhere. Does that get it more attention or is Longines’ sense of timing missing something?
We’re just wondering if striking while the hype is hot works better.
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