Reigning champion trainer John Size may have been out of luck and thousands of kilometres away yesterday, but that didn't stop Caspar Fownes and him from turning up the heat in the trainers' championship at Sha Tin. With six meetings to run, John Moore leads by five from Fownes, who scored with Natural Nine in the day's feature, with only one more back to Size, who landed a double.The job left to do in such a short space of time is by no means easy for Fownes and Size, but they would have gained
Reigning champion trainer John Size may have been out of luck and thousands of kilometres away yesterday, but that didn't stop Caspar Fownes and him from turning up the heat in the trainers' championship at Sha Tin. With six meetings to run, John Moore leads by five from Fownes, who scored with Natural Nine in the day's feature, with only one more back to Size, who landed a double.
The job left to do in such a short space of time is by no means easy for Fownes and Size, but they would have gained some heart when Moore was unable to reply, with his best result Johnson, who was just touched off in the final race.
Caspar Fownes was handing out "ride of the month" awards to Jacky Tong Chi-kit, after Tong's navigation to get Natural Nine home in the Skol Cup (1,650m) from the outside draw.
"We had some frustrating barrier draws on the card today and the outside of the field on the dirt is never a great place to be," said Fownes. "I said to Jacky that we didn't have too many options and he'd have to ride Natural Nine for luck, but what a great job he's done."
Tong took Natural Nine across behind the field from the gates, found the rail, then burrowed up to third horse back along the rail before the runners had left the straight the first time.
"I was lucky. The leader, Silver Sun, kicked away at the top of the straight and that left a gap for the horses following him along the rail to come through - if Silver Sun hadn't done that, I would have had nowhere to go," Tong smiled.
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