HKJC
With Sunday’s Sha Tin fixture being the 2016/17 “Season Finale”, Wednesday evening’s last Happy Valley meeting of the campaign was billed as the “Season Fiesta”. And there was a surge of noise from the buoyant crowd of 24,794 when Chad Schofield drove Flying Quest to nick the sixth, the Class 3 King’s Falcon Handicap (1200m), in a blanket finish.
“I could tell he was really surging underneath me and I could tell he was going to hit the line strongly,” Schofield said, “but it was then a question of whether he could get there in time.”
He did – at odds of 101/1. Trainer David Hall’s four-year-old New Zealand import pipped Green Card by a short-head, with the same distance back to Dollar Reward as he sealed a first win at start five in Hong Kong. The winning time was 1m 09.81s.
“He really impressed me; he had a lovely, smooth run in the race – the speed was on. He’s a very young, inexperienced horse and it’s his first time here but he handled it very well. I’d say his last two furlongs were pretty slick, he quickened nicely,” Schofield said.
The gelding registered 23.13s through the closing 400m. -HKJC