From RACING POST HKHorses for courses as trainer John Moore revelled in the grim afternoon weather at Sha Tin yesterday, racking up a first-time double that might have more to give him down the track. "You know I always seem to win races on these wet days," grinned Moore after King Al Akbar and Packing Ok gave the handler a double in tandem with South African rider Jeff Lloyd substituting for the suspended Darren Beadman."It's a tough world if you have to wait for someone to be su

From RACING POST HK

Horses for courses as trainer John Moore revelled in the grim afternoon weather at Sha Tin yesterday, racking up a first-time double that might have more to give him down the track. "You know I always seem to win races on these wet days," grinned Moore after King Al Akbar and Packing Ok gave the handler a double in tandem with South African rider Jeff Lloyd substituting for the suspended Darren Beadman.

"It's a tough world if you have to wait for someone to be suspended to ride a winner, but I put the effort in at the track in the mornings so it is nice to get on the odd one if Darren can't ride them," said Lloyd. "I'll be disappointed to give him back the reins for these two, but you know before you start that's what's going to happen."

Both horses were having their first outings for Moore, but in totally different circumstances - with Packing Ok a lightly raced Australian PP who had shown high promise in Melbourne, and King Al Akbar a naughty boy who had refused to do his best until now and arrived at Moore via Andreas Schutz and more recently Paul O'Sullivan.

"Well, we certainly got the benefit of the horse dropping so far in the ratings after getting here about 20 points higher than he was today," Moore said of King Al Akbar. "The fact was that we had to try something different because I think Paul had tried just about everything with him. I said to Darren we would maybe train the horse European style - get him in behind something else chasing, take off the blinkers and what have you, and maybe try the hood and crossed nose band to see if he would settle."

The next step was to take him to the trials to see how the plan was working and Beadman had more input there, too.

"Darren said he was going to just trial him hard held and see if he had any turn of foot," Moore said. "Well, as everyone saw, he trialled the place down on the dirt - so he probably could be a bit of a dirt horse, too, - but he was able to bring that trial to the races today, sit back and run on strongly. I'd like him to relax a bit more still, but there might be another one in him."

Packing Ok, however, shows real promise and it was a phone call that led him to Moore, who had trained the disappointing Packing Supreme for owner Raymond Lee Man-chun last year.

"I hadn't seen the film but somebody rang me and said should get my hands on this horse after he won his maiden at Ballarat by four lengths," Moore said. "Mr Lee raced him there, too, and I rang the family and they were kind enough to give him to me to train. He's been a bit finicky at the feed bag but his lead-up work has been very good. I wanted to throw him in the deep end today with 1,400m first-up and he's come out and done the job there like a horse with a real staying future."

The four-year-old son of Redoute's Choice settled back in the field as expected but unleashed a searing burst of acceleration from the 300m, slipping through a narrow opening on the way to overhauling an otherwise leader-dominated finish.

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