Two of racing's newest stars hold the key to the Hong Kong Jockey Club Community Trophy (1,000m) today with griffin Bear Hero ready to graduate against the older sprinters. Trainer David Ferraris has taken the added advantage of a 10-pound claim for new apprentice Alvin Ng Ka-chun as the unbeaten two-year-old makes the step into open-age races, meaning his closest rivals will be giving the youngster huge amounts of poundage. Ng made a huge impression with his positive attitude and riding last w

Two of racing's newest stars hold the key to the Hong Kong Jockey Club Community Trophy (1,000m) today with griffin Bear Hero ready to graduate against the older sprinters. Trainer David Ferraris has taken the added advantage of a 10-pound claim for new apprentice Alvin Ng Ka-chun as the unbeaten two-year-old makes the step into open-age races, meaning his closest rivals will be giving the youngster huge amounts of poundage.

Ng made a huge impression with his positive attitude and riding last week on debut and is going to be in very serious demand for the remainder of this season with his claim.

While the griffins have been thin on the ground this term, Bear Hero has clearly been grades better than the others as he coasted home in his two starts up the straight.

At his latest outing, Bear Hero strolled home in 56.5 seconds, with one of his main rivals, Eagle Regiment (Brett Prebble) winning in Class Three an hour later over the same course in 55.63 seconds.

At face value, that suggests Eagle Regiment's performance was far better than Bear Hero's, but the weight differences will make it far more interesting. Bear Hero carried 127 pounds and wasn't fully extended in winning and drops to 106 pounds. Eagle Regiment on the other hand was stretched right out in his narrow win and rises from 122 pounds to 131 pounds.

That swing of 30 pounds should account for the 0.93 second time difference, even without taking account of what the two-year-old had up his sleeve.

Nevertheless, the task ahead of Bear Hero is no pushover taking on talented young runners like Eagle Regiment and Time After Time (Darren Beadman), who are also going somewhere, and history isn't necessarily in his favour.

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