Karis Teetan winning on Ambitious King at Sha Tin, Hong Kong – photo by K Shaw
Jockey Karis Teetan and trainer Tony Millard dominated the all-dirt meeting at Sha Tin on Wednesday night with a treble, capped by a win to an up-and-coming speed machine bought for a bargain price at the Hong Kong International Sale.
The pair hit the ground running in the card opener, winning the Class 5 Wang Tau Hom Handicap over 1200m by 1.25 lengths with Supreme Hong Kong. Their second win came in race 3, the Class 4 San Po Kong Handicap over 1200m, with Medic Kingdom who was notching his third win of the term. They got home a comfortable length to the good of Hurry Hurry Up in a time of 1.09.74.
Race 7 was the Class 3 Kowloon City Handicap over 1200m. Despite jumping from barrier 11, Ambitious King left no doubts in sealing the treble, beating Dehere’s The Lover with Joao Moreira by 2 lengths. Millard commented: “That wide draw actually helped with him. He doesn’t have much early speed and we couldn’t ride him handy like we wanted to, but from there Karis was able to get the room to ride him to be on the speed.”
Top Team – Tony Millard & Karis Teetan
Ambitious King was the lowest-priced lot at the March auction, knocked down to the owner of Millard’s injured star Ambitious Dragon, Johnson Lam Pui-hung, for what now looks a paltry HK$1.2 million. The four-year-old has now won two of three this season after an easy all-the-way victory in Class Three and last night’s victory that earned an International Sales Griffin bonus of half his purchase price alone.
“We actually liked him the most at the sale,” Millard said. “And we got him for next to nothing. Johnson sent us there and said we could spend $4 million and we got him for just over a million. Now we have a very nice horse on our hands. He has already paid for himself and then some.
“He had a bit of a setback with a quarter crack, but that might have been a blessing – it has allowed us to hold him back a bit and when Happy Valley shuts down at the end of the season he can come here and race on the dirt, he has real speed this horse.”
Teetan had a full book of rides for the night and also notched a 2nd aboard Confucius for the S Woods stable in race 2 as well as a 4th aboard Tai Po Fortune for trainer T P Yung.
