There was just a nose in it, but just enough to swear about for favourite punters as French jockey Maxime Guyon's unbeaten run on Ambitious Dragon came to an inglorious end in the Cathay Pacific Jockey Club Mile and the John Moore-trained Destined For Glory put up his bid for international glory next month.
Earlier in the week, Moore had declared Ambitious Dragon was the best horse he had seen in 40 years in Hong Kong racing and that only injury or bad luck would see him beaten against domestic opposition, but bad luck arrived by the truck load.
Guyon was stuck in no-man's land wide and neither forward nor back throughout the race, yet the Horse of the Year still looked like clinging on for victory until Destined For Glory (Tim Clark) arrived.
'It was certainly a surprise to win it and especially with my third-string horse,' Moore admitted. 'But we had a great run while the favourite had a tough run.
'I'm thrilled for the owners - Mr Siu has allowed me to spend a lot of money on horses for him and Irian just missed out but this makes up for it. Last season, I thought Destined For Glory as good as any of my Derby horses, but he has been very fractious and travelled too fiercely in a number of his races so we might try to keep him to the mile until he gets over that. He saddled up well today but he still got stirred up when Tim got on him.' Guyon's review was succinct, declaring 'he is still a champion to me', while Ambitious Dragon's trainer Tony Millard tried to take positives from the defeat that it won't dent his prospects for the Hong Kong Cup ahead.
'He was very wide and quite close up and that's not his style,' he said. 'But he still went down by just a nostril. He hadn't run for seven weeks and, as things panned out we didn't win, but the horse ran a great race. We were hoping to win, but that was a great lead up.'
Australian Tim Clark was as surprised as anyone to win on Destined For Glory after he had expected to ride last year's winner, Able One.
