Yiu on fire when it comes to strike rate(23 October)

MARK YOUR CARD by MURRAY BELL

The incredible thing about last season's performance of Ricky Yiu Poon-fie to be the hottest strike-rate trainer in town is that he has not only managed to maintain it in the new term - he has improved on it.

Last term, Yiu sent out 24 winners from 181 runners at a strike rate of 13.3 per cent to beat Paul O'Sullivan (52 winners from 396 runners) on the table of leading trainers (by winners to runners).

This season, however, Yiu has really got it down to a fine art. He has seven winners already in the space of 11 meetings, but he has achieved that from only 32 runners.

Consider that performance compared to the three trainers immediately above him to understand how well he is doing - Dennis Yip Chor-hong (eight from 94), Caspar Fownes (eight from 87) and John Moore (eight from 90).

In fact, the six trainers above Yiu on the premiership table have an average strike rate of 11.2 per cent, but Yiu's personal success rate since September 9 is 21.9 per cent.

Of course, we recognise that 32 runners is a small sample and that these things invariably average out over time as the size of the statistical sample grows. But if you take Yiu's two seasons and combine them, it still reads most attractively at 31 winners from 213 runners, or 14.6 per cent.

Yiu has been thrust into the limelight over the past 12 months with exciting sprint discovery Sacred Kingdom, the Encosta de Lago four-year-old who is now one of the benchmark sprinters in town. Sacred Kingdom won first-up under Gerald Mosse on October 1 and his clash with Absolute Champion and Medic Power in the Cathay Pacific International Sprint Trial on November 17 will be one of the season's highlights.

Yiu has previously played at the top end of the game, so he won't be overawed by the prospect of taking Sacred Kingdom in against global competition. He won the 1999 Hong Kong Sprint with Fairy King Prawn, only to be "rewarded" by losing the horse to Ivan Allan in the new year.

He was also the original trainer of Electronic Unicorn and Bullish Luck, and had both those horses well into triple-figure ratings before losing them to John Size and Tony Cruz respectively.

Yiu also finished third to David Hayes in the 1998-99 standings with 40 winners, just six behind the dual title-winning Australian.