From Racing Post (Hong Kong)www.racing.scmp.com"No, I wasn't standing there watching him come back for the winner's photo and thinking he was my Derby horse," laughs John Size of Brave Kid's debut but the pair will attempt to win not only the classic but a unique place in history today.Brave Kid has made an extraordinary passage from winning that 1,000m Class Four debut at Sha Tin just over three months ago, to being one of the favourites for the HK$16 million Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong D

From Racing Post (Hong Kong)

www.racing.scmp.com

"No, I wasn't standing there watching him come back for the winner's photo and thinking he was my Derby horse," laughs John Size of Brave Kid's debut but the pair will attempt to win not only the classic but a unique place in history today.

Brave Kid has made an extraordinary passage from winning that 1,000m Class Four debut at Sha Tin just over three months ago, to being one of the favourites for the HK$16 million Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Derby. But Derbies come around every year - shooting for seven wins from seven starts, all in the one campaign, now that's once in a lifetime.

Before Brave Kid, 22 horses had won six races in a single season. Only the great River Verdon was able to make the Derby part of that hot streak and none has ever made it seven.

With Darwin, Grand Delight, Armada, More Bountiful and now Brave Kid, Size has managed the winners of six races in a season five times in nine years, more than any other trainer, so he knows as well as anyone the scope of the task to go one step further but is typically upbeat.

"Armada was unbeaten in his six races, so maybe he could have done it, but he ran out of season. He wasn't a horse you could race often, not as robust as Brave Kid," he recalls. "Needing space between his runs, Armada won his sixth in the last race of the last day of the season, so he never got the chance. With four months of this season still to go, you'd have to think Brave Kid will get his opportunity to make it seven, whether it's in the Derby or not."

But Size doesn't see attempting to "do the impossible" in the Derby today as so much harder because it's in that race. "Well, there are a couple of things in his favour. One is that he's come up through the handicaps against all ages and now he switches back to his own age group and he goes to a set-weights race," Size said.

"If he was going for the seventh in a handicap, you always have the chance you run into something that's getting a lot of weight off, maybe a 10-pound claim as well, and then they are just too well handicapped and they'll knock you off.

"I'm not saying the Derby is any soft target, but level weights against his own age? You'd have to think those things are pluses."