INSIDE TRACK: Numbers, tactics and targets – How the Little Paradise hype machine could meet reality

Shane Dye’s Idol Thoughts column this week was the perfect circuit-breaker just as the Little Paradise hype train left the station. His reminder was simple: know the difference between a horse with a short, sharp sprint and one that can sustain a run – because Hong Kong’s Classic Series has a habit of exposing the gap.

If you want a “memory lane” example, wind the clock back to the 2015 four-year-old series at Sha Tin and the John Moore yard’s civil war: Able Friend versus Designs On Rome.

In the Classic Mile Able Friend did what he did best: relaxed, travelled, then produced an electric, race-winning turn of foot. There have been few better modern examples of a horse who can put a race to bed in 250 meters. The problem with that weapon is it needs the right battlefield.

Enter Designs On Rome – a different machine entirely. Beyond 1600m, and especially at Sha Tin where positioning and rhythm matter as much as raw talent, he was the poster horse for a long, sustained sprint. When the tempo lifts early, and the pressure begins before the straight, that “keep going” engine can turn a rival’s brilliance into a liability. 

The Classic Cup (1800m) was where the theory became reality. It’s a race littered with shocks and “odds-on bites the dust” stories because it sits in the awkward middle ground: too far for pure milers, not quite the Derby. Sweeping the Series is hard because you’re asked to win three different races, at three different tempos, often adopting three different sets of tactics.

In the Classic Cup, Tommy Berry rode Designs On Rome just as he said he would in the press. He stalked Able Friend, moved early, and flushed Joao Moreira out before the favorite could wait-and-pounce. Able Friend’s turn of foot was still there – it just wasn’t allowed to be decisive. Berry said what he was going to do but Moreira was powerless to stop it. 

Even in defeat, Moreira’s Derby ride on Able Friend remains one of Hong Kong’s great “losing rides”: the desperate, inside-save, split-late gamble that almost stole the big one. But “almost” is the word. Designs On Rome was simply the better horse at the trip.

Which brings us back to 2026 and Shane’s point about Little Paradise. Sunday’s Classic Mile win was impressive – and the feel-good factor is clear: underdog trainer Jimmy Ting Koon-ho, comeback jockey Vincent Ho Chak-yiu, and the inevitable Golden Sixty comparisons. But Classic Mile winners don’t automatically own the Series – they inherit a target.

Could Frankie Lor’s genuine stayer Numbers be to Little Paradise what Designs On Rome was to Able Friend? We will have a better idea after Sunday. Other rivals will adjust too: Invincible Ibis can be ridden closer, up in trip, and Beauty Bolt – tough in a strongly run mile – might yet produce a sharper sprint if ridden quieter. Others, seemingly out of contention, can take tactical risks. 

Remember: even the great Golden Sixty had to use every inch of the Derby track to mow down the 290-1 bolter Playa Del Puente after Blake Shinn’s catch-me-if-you-can tactics stretched him to the limit in 2020. 

Little Paradise now steps into the Classic Cup with the spotlight fixed firmly on him. Golden Sixty could withstand that. Able Friend couldn't. The difference between a short, sharp sprint and a long, sustained one is about to matter again.