Hewitson Wins On Valiant Elegance For The Fifth Time
Luke Ferraris ended last season with a bang, scoring his first Hong Kong double in the final meeting.
Today’s Happy Valley races were the second meeting of the new season and Ferraris won the first two races on the card.
For good measure, his South African compatriots Lyle Hewitson and Douglas Whyte then combined to win the third race with Valiant Elegance (Salade).
Adding to the South African flavour was that Ferraris’s win in the first was aboard the six-year-old South African-bred Vercingetorix gelding Super Commander, who started at long odds of 30/1.
Super Commander was known in South Africa as Fearless Warrior.
The Klawervlei Stud-bred colt was trained to two wins in four starts by Vaughan Marshall.
He was beaten half-a-length by the What A Winter colt Armando in his last start out here in the Grade 2 Cape Of Good Hope Nursery over 1200m.
Both of those horses then made their way to Hong Kong.
Armando, who was trained by Brett Crawford in SA and was unbeaten in three starts, had no success in Hong Kong and has been retired.
Super Commander has now won two races on the island but his first win came after having dropped from an initial rating of 74 down to 46.
Another interesting aside is that Super Commander’s dam War Path (Captain Al) won the controversial race at Clairwood a few years ago which caused a near riot, forcing the meeting to be abandoned.
The cause of the uproar was a horse called My Sanctuary, who is the dam of none other than Equus Three-year-old champion of last season, Safe Passage.
Super Commander is trained by Pierre Ng.
Ferraris second win was aboard 3/1 shot Winning Icey (Hinchinbrook), who is trained by four-times Hong Kong champion trainer Caspar Fownes.
Meanwhile, Hewitson has now won no fewer than five races on Valiant Elegance.