RACEDAY FOCUS: Yuen-Ng hot streak rolls on — but for how long?

Yuen and Ng are running hot — but can it last?

Few trainer-jockey combinations have started the season hotter than Nichola Yuen Hang-yiu and Pierre Ng Pang-chi, but the more interesting question now is how long they can keep it up.

Yuen has ridden six times for Ng and won on four of them, an extraordinary 66.7 percent strike rate, while five of the six have finished fourth or better. Those four wins account for two-thirds of Yuen’s total this season and came at starting prices of $5.75, $8.10, $14.10 and $5.80.

Across all six rides, the market gave them a combined expectation of just 0.57 wins; Yuen delivered four, leaving the partnership 3.43 wins above expectation.

That sort of strike rate is unlikely to hold over a much larger sample and today should give some indication of whether the market has begun to adjust. Yuen has another five rides for Ng: Good Fortune, Master Champion, Healthy Healthy, Drombeg Banner and Aerovolanic. 

Crawford the sleeper stable to watch

Second-season trainer Brett Crawford is still 0-for-27, but that bare figure does a poor job of describing how his horses have been running.

Those 27 runners have produced three seconds, three thirds and two fourths, while 12, or 44.4 percent, have finished within three lengths of the winner. Almost 30 percent have made the first four.

More interesting is how often the market has let them go. Seven of those 12 close-up runners started fifth choice or worse in the betting, and six were at double-figure odds. Among them were Glorious Dynasty, beaten 2¾ lengths at $75; Hero Rising, fourth at $37; Conghua Galaxy, third at $29; and All Are Mine, only 1¼ lengths away at $11.

Galaxy Patch then went within a neck of breaking the drought on Sunday.

Crawford still has to turn the near misses into a winner, but this hardly looks like an out-of-form stable. He has another six runners today to try to get on the board. 

Can Majestic Valour make it three for Shum?

Danny Shum Chap-shing has already had two former Pierre Ng Pang-chi runners improve sharply after changing stables. Can Majestic Valour follow them?

Packing King and Packing Fighter combined for four wins and a second from their first five starts for Shum, all under Zac Purton. Packing King won his first two, while Packing Fighter has gone second-first-first, capped by another emphatic win on Sunday.

Majestic Valour won two of his first three Hong Kong starts, both over Sha Tin’s 1,200 meters under Purton, before four subsequent Class 3 runs produced no further wins and his form tapered off.

Purton has ridden him three times for two wins, his only defeat coming last start when Majestic Valour was tried over 1,400 meters and failed to see out the trip after racing on the pace.

The champion jockey has also partnered him in both trials since the July transfer, and Majestic Valour now returns to the 1,200 meters that produced both victories.

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓