It may have only been a run-of-the-mill all-weather card at Sha Tin last night, but that didn’t stop Mark Newnham continuing his remarkable winning streak under the lights.
Newnham extended his remarkable sequence of consecutive meetings with at least one winner to 13 last night when Notthesillyone held on in a tight finish on Sha Tin’s eight-race programme.
“The horses are going well,” Newnham said. “They’re fit, they’re presenting well in the yard and they're running up to their talent. We can’t ask for more than that.”
Newnham arrived at Sha Tin four wins clear at the top of the trainers’ championship and he ticked over to 19 wins at the 15th meeting thanks to his Class Five winner. The trainer is only two meetings shy of the sequence Pierre Ng Pang-chi strung together during the 2023-24 season.
“The lads let me know about it as I didn’t know,” Newnham said. “It’s one of those things. It probably can’t keep going like this but for as long as it does, we’re happy. The strike rate is about 18 percent and realistically it can’t stay that high, so there will probably be a lull, just hopefully not for very long.”
Notthesillyone was not for catching after Luke Ferraris sent him forward from gate seven. After taking the field along at a sedate tempo, the South African rider threw everything including the kitchen sink at his mount to finish a nose in front of the fast-finishing Cheer For South.
Newnham said his five-year-old gelding, who finished a respectable third and fourth on his two dirt starts this term, has relished a switch to the all-weather.
“It was something I wanted to try after last season because it took him all season to win a race,” he said.
“I had a look at his early trials here and he always trialled quite well on the dirt, so when there was an opportunity to run him on there for his first run of the season, I thought we’d give it a chance. His three wins on there have been really good.
