BEAUTY APPLAUSE, RELENTLESS ME & FLYING VICTORY
3rd November 2019
Price Bloodstock spread the celebrations around at Sha Tin on Sunday, with a winning triple spread across three different training yards.
John Size has trained many a winner for Price Bloodstock connections so it was appropriate that he kicked things off with Beauty Applaus but, just to show there’s plenty to go around, rookie trainer Douglas Whyte chimed in with Restless Me in the following race and then Frankie Lor added promising Flying Victory to round the day out in style.
Beauty Applause made it three wins from six starts when he led all the way for Joao Moreira and Size was keen to highlight how much help the horse gives himself and his jockeys.
“He’s not a star but he is a horse who will perform above his talent to some extent,” Size said. “He has a very good attitude and his racing style helps him a lot. He consistently puts himself up on the speed In his races, into a position where he can win, and those types of horses tend to have more good luck, if you want to call it that, than horses that come from the back of the field. He’s doing a good job.”
Whyte is only in the first months of his training career but has made a good fist of it already and Relentless Me carved off a minor piece of Whyte’s training history as the first horse to win two races for him, following his victory last month.
This time with ten pound claiming apprentice Alfie Chan on board, Restless Me went to the lead after a small contest with another runner and never really looked like being run down after that.
“I do think that, with the ten pounds and the way the track is riding today, it was a plan that all came together,” said Whyte. ”Alfie did a good job in listening to me. He got into a bit of a speed battle early but fortunately that other horse dropped off and it was the winning move. He got comfortable, got a cheap second sectional and that won him the race. He’s a horse that puts himself into a winnable position, he goes to Class 3 again now and hasn’t won there but has raced well before. In his current frame of mind, he might get away with one.””
It was Relentless Me’s fifth victory and took his prizemoney to almost $4.2 million.
Flying Victory’s sixth start brought up his first Class 3 win and this time it was Frankie Lor and Grant van Niekerk who did the honours, van Nikerk giving him a nice run behind the speed before finishing too well under a light handicap.
“It has taken him a couple of races this season to get to the right level of fitness, he didn’t have a great draw but got a good ride and was strong at the end today and I think his best is still ahead of him,” Lor said after the four-year-old’s second success.