Hotshots light up training track
Sunday's Three-Year-Old rivals add theatre to yesterday's trackwork
It was like they had let them out of school early.
So, there they were. Precocious youngsters barely on the cusp of adulthood, full of swank and plenty of attitude strutting their stuff and flexing their muscles.
Only difference being they were of the four-legged kind. And what we saw on the training track yesterday morning was to be expected from such highly strung individuals.
With the prize purse of $500,000 up for grabs in Sunday's Second Leg of the Singapore Three-Year-Old Challenge, there was no better incentive for them to show off. That, they did. And early risers at trackside were rewarded with a treat.
Taking it from the top of the handicap, we had Be Bee doing his thing with metronome precision.
His jockey John Powell knew just what to do. Not too much. Just like he did when getting Be Bee to peak condition for the first leg - which they won last month.
So off they went, clocking a presentable 44.9sec for the 600m. It would have been what trainer Shane Baertschiger would have ordered - if, indeed orders were necessary.
Be Bee is in that kind of form that he could knock the socks off his rivals - and they wouldn't have seen it coming.
A winner of four from eight and yet to miss the board, expect another honest show from this son of Showcasing.
Then there was Tesoro Privado. Like Be Bee, he too is a last-start winner with superb credentials, having never missed making the board in all of his nine starts.
He is one of three runners from Ricardo Le Grange's yard and, with Barend Vorster in the saddle for his morning hit-out, he ran the distance in 37.1sec - after a round of cantering.
Twice a winner over Sunday's race distance of 1,400m, he will be right up with the speedsters throughout the trip and, with a sprinkling of luck, he could land the prize.
Vorster was on another of Le Grange's runners King Louis when working with stablemate Captain Jamie. The pair who, between them, have four wins to show, worked with gusto - matching strides over the 600m which they covered in 37.4sec.
Coming from a barn which has been firing all season, the Cliff Brown-trained Mister Yeoh laid down the gauntlet with a nice piece of work.
With Michael Rodd in the saddle, the speedster was all go when running the trip in 37.1sec.
It was last month when he became the talk of the town after whipping his rivals by almost seven and a half lengths in a 1,200m sprint on debut. That race was on the grass - which is what he will get on Sunday.
Finally, there was Lord O'Reilly. Out on the track, he was theatre. Trained by Leslie Khoo and ridden by the Frenchman Ryan Curatolo, he had the hard eye of a contender and he backed it up with a 35.9sec romp over the 600m.
Like the rest who graced the track yesterday morning, he too looked like gold dust. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner and, come Sunday evening when day is done, most of us will only remember the great one - while forgetting the awesome work put in by the rest.
That's racing...
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