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Ho magic works wonders with King (17 Oct)
MARK YOUR CARD by MURRAY BELL Ho has prepared five winners this season and two of them have come back from significant injuries, the other being recent Happy Valley winner Always Zieten, who's had tendon issues with both front legs.
Ho has, however, also shown what he can do with a sound horse by keeping smart young Danehill sprinter Grand Supreme unbeaten, with the promise of much more to come. He also had stayer Dash Ahead return to racing in the same manner he went out for the summer break - a winner.
Tendon injuries are the worst thing for a trainer to have to deal with, and there's no such thing as a "good" tendon after the onset of injury. However, Ho has shown a remarkable ability to patch up crocked horses, and not only get them back to the races but to be winning races as well.
Sometimes, as was the case with Champion King (injured sesamoid in one front joint), it's hard for a trainer to be confident of the horse's chance in a race because he is not prepared to really squeeze the horse in trackwork, always mindful of the horse's inherent unsoundness.
They understand that most injuries occur on training tracks, not on race day where horses have the luxury of a perfectly-maintained green turf strip. So often, with these horses, they can go out at big odds because the trainer is forced into wait-and-see mode, whereas with the younger and more sound horses the trainer can try them out more fully on the tracks and have more confidence.
But in Ho's case at least, a number of horses that many trainers would have retired have found a new lease of life and even a return to the winner's circle.
With the large number of world-class trainers in Hong Kong, sourced from major racing centres in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Europe, there is no place that represents a more competitive environment for a trainer than Hong Kong.
So when the local horsemen are achieving success against this calibre of competition, you can be sure it is well earned.
Another local who's enjoying a tremendous start to the season is Ricky Yiu Poon-fie, who in six weeks has already equalled his haul of five winners for the whole of last term.
Yiu is a Group One-winning trainer, having won a Hong Kong Sprint with the great Fairy King Prawn, and it's pleasing to see his stocks on the rise again after such sparse returns in 2005-06.
While a number of the big-name yards have struggled for winners in the opening weeks, the two local sophomore trainers Me Tsui Yu-sak and Michael Chang Chun-wai have been going great guns, with nine wins between them.
Another to rack up four early wins has been Peter Ng Bik-kuen, whose horsemanship is in a very similar mould to Ho's. He too has the happy knack of keeping unsound horses on their feet and squeezing wins out of animals that have, realistically, exceeded their use-by date.
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