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A big holiday crowd was treated to a New Year’s Day thriller at Sha Tin today, Thursday, 1 January, as Rewarding Hero scored a nail-biting, nip and tuck victory in the HKG3 Chinese Club Challenge Cup.
The John Moore-trained six-year-old sat last of nine in the 1400m feature as the field swung into the home straight, but responded gamely to the energetic urgings of jockey Neil Callan to snag the spoils.
With the Irishman driving piston-like down the stretch, Rewarding Hero quickened to join long-time leader Beauty Flame and race favourite All You Wish at around the 200m mark. And with the trio locked in a grinding tussle to the wire, it was Callan’s mount that gamely edged ahead in the final stride to score by a short-head and the same. Tour De Force was a further three quarters of a length back in fourth.
“That was a good run to get his first Group 3 win. He’s got to the line really strongly” said Moore after his charge had seen off runner-up All You Wish to win in a time of 1m 20.99s.
“His last run was a good one and he only had to run up to that to have a really good chance in this. Now we’ll have to look at the (G1) Stewards’ Cup – he was rated 110 going into this so we don’t really have anywhere else to go.”
The win was a third consecutive New Year’s Day triumph for the Exceed And Excel gelding, who won on his career debut at this fixture two years ago and followed that with a Class 2 success on the first day of 2014.
Moore’s Sterling City, last year’s G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen winner, crossed the line seventh, four and three-quarter lengths behind his stablemate.
Douglas Whyte was thwarted aboard All You Wish in the feature but the 13-time Hong Kong champion delighted his fans with a double on the day thanks to the Danny Shum-trained Charity Joy in Race 2, the Tai Mo Shan Handicap (1000m), and the hot favourite Super Talent, trained by Benno Yung, in Race 7, the Mount Parker Handicap (1200m).
Umberto Rispoli took the day’s riding honours with a four-timer, in the absence of suspended Jockeys’ Premiership front-runners Joao Moreira and Zac Purton. The Italian was on the mark with the David Hall-trained Optimization Star (Race 3) and the Tony Millard-trained Ovett (Race 10), and landed a brace for in-form handler Paul O’Sullivan thanks to Why Why (Race 4) and Celestial Smile (Race 11).
The attendance at Hong Kong’s racecourses was 67,984. The day’s turnover of HK$1.509 billion was the highest so far this season.
