Recent defeats point way to future winners(5 June)

MARK YOUR CARD by ALAN AITKEN

At the tail end of the season the southern hemisphere three-year-olds usually dish it out to the older horses.

At Sha Tin on Sunday, we saw defeats for some up and coming members of the age group but they won't be long in turning that around.

The Tony Cruz-trained Leading Ahead handled his first dirt assignment brilliantly in the Skol Cup and he looks a horse headed for much better things.

There was no disgrace in being narrowly beaten by Rocket Win as the Ricky Yiu Poon-fie-trained gelding has been in good form of late and Cruz's youngster had to concede him 10 pounds at the weights even after the allowance of Marco Chui Kwan-lai.

A winner of four of his seven runs in Australia, Leading Ahead was tried in some good staying races for his own age late last year but didn't quite have the ammunition for that at the time.

That might not be the case as a stronger four-year-old though and he looks a likely Derby horse next season.

In the final race, Win Practitioner caught the usual attention in defeat, adding a wide run to his list of grievances but once again it wasn't enough to see him out of the finish. That has been the most encouraging part of Win Practitioner's career - when things go wrong he is beaten but never thrashed.

The Alex Wong Yu-on-trained Butterfield on the other hand, has the tactical ability but is simply screaming for a decent draw.

At his previous run, he spent much of the race at Happy Valley racing wide and with a draw last Sunday, he would have raced handier and beaten South Breeze.

Douglas Whyte had no option but to go back from a difficult gate as pressing forward wide out would have been sure defeat, but the solution was also fraught with difficulty as on-pace runners got all the pluses on the weekend.

It was all just too much to do but Butterfield knuckled down and did a great job to run third at his first attempt at 1,800m. He should be seen to advantage before the season ends.