General profits from rock-hard surface(15 May)

MARK YOUR CARD by MURRAY BELL

Shangdong General may not have looked as cool as he had been in previous starts prior to last Saturday's griffin race at Sha Tin but the American-bred was sure cold enough the way he clinically dissected his rivals in new class-record time.

Shangdong General won the Special Cargo Plate by a neck from debutant Our Lucky Baby in the amazing time of 1:08.8, easily eclipsing the former griffin record of 1:09.3 set by Butterfield on April 1 last year.

You might assume that Shangdong General must have struck some very favourable conditions under which to post this fast time and - as is usually the case with class records - and you'd be right.

At a time of year when the tracks are generally softening, the ground at Sha Tin was riding hard and fast after a week of warm weather. But even so, Shangdong General's time was still half a second quicker than standard after factoring out the speed of the track on the day.

Shangdong General, trained by Me Tsui Yu-sak, has done very well for two wins and a second from four starts. He is a son of Came Home, a stallion unknown in Hong Kong before this gelding came along, but he is a son of Gone West and plies his trade at the famous Kentucky farm Lane's End at a fee of US$25,000.

Runner-up Our Lucky Baby was the one to take from the race for future reference. The New Zealand-bred Stravinsky gelding was a product of the Hong Kong International Sale and went very well first-up, aided by an excellent ride by Howard Cheng Yue-tin to easily overcome the wide barrier (11). Our Lucky Baby has, also lowered the course record, by around 0.45 seconds, and should comfortably open his winning account next time out assuming he recovers properly from his debut exertions.

Later in the day, it was impossible not to be impressed by Watch What Happens, the Sean Woods-trained galloper who returned from defeats in longer races to make mincemeat of his rivals at 1,200 metres on the dirt.

Watch What Happens is, ironically, another son of Stravinsky, though this one was sired during Stravinsky's northern shift as a Coolmore Stud shuttler.

On an all-weather track that was also fast and dry, Watch What Happens had 3-1/4 lengths up his sleeve in scoring from the late-closing Liberal's Knight and the unlucky Blue Genes, who had been posted three wide with no cover all the way.

This was a new course record, with Watch What Happens posting the spectacular 1,200m time of 1:07.8, slicing three-tenths of a second off the 1:08.1 set by Honour Supreme and Byron.