In the throes of a superb debut season, Pierre Ng hopes Marado can lay the foundations for a successful LONGINES Hong Kong International Races (HKIR) campaign for the freshman stable on 11 December when the gelding contests the Class 4 Mody Handicap (1400m) at Sha Tin on Sunday (4 December).<\/p>
With 11 wins and 34 minor placings from 120 starters this term, 39-year-old Ng has made a bright start to his training career and is delighted to have secured starts for Lucky Patch and Duke Wai in the HK$24 million LONGINES Hong Kong Sprint (1200m) next week.<\/p>
Before saddling his first Group 1 starters, Ng will bid to add further lustre to his 2022\/23 campaign with last-start course and distance winner Marado (134lb), who is again partnered by Zac Purton.<\/p>
\u201cI\u2019m very pleased with his form, with what he did last start – it was a pretty brave win. This time, he\u2019s drawn 12 and should run well again,\u201d Ng said. \u201cWe have to be positive on him again, let him travel, let him breathe \u2013 and fight in the straight.\u201d<\/p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”33011″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”link_image”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Ng cautiously monitored the performances of LONGINES HKIR contenders Lucky Patch and Duke Wai in a 1200m dirt trial on Friday (2 December), opting not to read anything significant into outwardly modest hit-outs.<\/p>
Lucky Patch was checked before finishing 10th behind Gallant Waking, while Duke Wai appeared to resent the kick back and tailed the field throughout to cross in 11th in 1m 09.38s.<\/p>
\u201cI\u2019m just okay with Lucky Patch\u2019s trial this morning. When he went around the turn, he got into a squeeze and got a check. It wasn\u2019t smooth enough, other than that I\u2019m happy,\u201d Ng said.<\/p>
\u201cDuke Wai is doing brilliant, as you can see in the dirt trial he doesn\u2019t like the kickback and he didn\u2019t do much. I\u2019m really looking forward to next week \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter what they draw, he\u2019ll come from the back.\u201d<\/p>
Ng went close to snaring his stable\u2019s first G2 victory when Lucky Patch (second) and Duke Wai (third) chased home Lucky Sweynesse in the BOCHK Private Banking Jockey Club Sprint (1200m).<\/p>
Looking to Sunday week, Ng said: \u201cWe\u2019re lucky to get one horse into the internationals and now we\u2019ve got two. Definitely, a big hope for the whole stable. I tried my best to get these two horses selected and now we\u2019ve done the first step, I hope we can make the second step (of running well).<\/p>
\u201cThere are some strong international raiders there who are strong as well, so I think it will be a pretty even race and a great race to watch.\u201d<\/p>
Sunday\u2019s meeting starts with the Class 5 Ashley Handicap (1200m, dirt) at 1pm.<\/p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”33010″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” onclick=”link_image”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In the throes of a superb debut season, Pierre Ng hopes Marado can lay the foundations for a successful LONGINES Hong Kong International Races (HKIR) campaign for the freshman stable on 11 December when the gelding contests the Class 4 Mody Handicap (1400m) at Sha Tin on Sunday (4 December).With 11… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":33012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"2normal","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33008"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33008"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33065,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33008\/revisions\/33065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/campaigns.hkjc.com\/hkir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}