By Alan Carasso
The John Size-trained Nothingilikemore (Aus) (Husson {Arg}), who figures no worse than the third betting favourite for Sunday's BMW Hong Kong Derby (2000m) at Sha Tin Racecourse, partnered with big-race rider Joao Moreira to 'win' a 1200-metre barrier trial over the all-weather track Tuesday morning.
Winner of six from eight and better than HK$11 million in prizemoney, Nothingilikemore was off slowly in his two career defeats, but there were no such incidents in Tuesday's hit-out. Straight into the bridle, the A$40,000 graduate of the 2015 Inglis Sydney Classic Yearling sale came back to his rider to sit second behind the talented Simply Brilliant (GB) (Frankel {GB}), but claimed that one with ease inside the 400m pole and edged away to score comfortably (video).
“I was extremely pleased,” Moreira told the Hong Kong Jockey Club's David Morgan. “Hopefully he can reproduce this kind of attitude and performance in the race on Sunday.
The 'Magic Man', who won his first Derby in 2017 aboard Rapper Dragon (Aus) (Street Boss), added: “He's been shaking his head up and down a lot in the gate and that's a concern because there's nothing more we can do. Doing that means he may miss his concentration–he's a very sharp type of a horse, if he notices the gate is open, he's going to jump as quickly as he can but unfortunately last time he put his head down, as if he was going to shake it up and down, the gates opened, his head came up and he'd missed the start. I'm quite confident it's not going to happen on Sunday but we'll find out in the race if it's all really worked.”
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