Joao Moreira had his second successive shutout at Happy Valley as the night belonged to four-win hero Zac Purton, who narrowly denied the Magic Man his chance to break the prize-money record for a season.

Purton faces a hopeless task to peg back Moreira in the defence of his jockeys' championship title, but he is putting some distance between himself and Douglas Whyte after Joyeux, Amazing Gift, Flying Chaparral and Ishvara carried him home first.

Moreira went winless at the Valley last Wednesday before bouncing back with six wins on Sunday at Sha Tin and he was winless again after going into last night's card needing just HK$750,000 in stakes to take him past Whyte's full season prize-money record.

He was left hanging, tantalisingly close to achieving that feat with almost half a season to go, and the difference was in Purton's opening victory on Caspar Fownes-trained Joyeux, surviving a protest to land the second race.

With the track playing on pace and on the rail in the first half of the card, Joyeux and Spitfire (Moreira) shared the lead for most of the running with Joyeux scrambling over the line first after leaning in and twice bumping Spitfire in the final 300m.

Objection lodged, objection tossed out and Purton was away.

"He's only three and still very green. He doesn't know what it's about but this is the first win and I think as he gains experience and maturity, there will be quite a few more," Purton said.

"I wasn't too concern about the protest, he was pulling away strongly on the line."

The season for trainer Paul O'Sullivan just keeps rolling along and this time it was another double with Always Wonderful (Umberto Rispoli) and Amazing Gift (Purton) that kept him in the news.

"Always Wonderful has only had a couple of runs for me, so it's nice to get a win out of him.

"He struggled last time up on the pace in a fast run 1,200m, so I brought him back to 1,000m and Umberto gave him a great ride," O'Sullivan said.

"Amazing Gift won well last time and only just scraped in tonight and was a bit lucky as the runner-up got held up. But he did have to take the field up to the tearaway leaders, so it showed his attitude is OK."

The track turned around during the meeting, with the last few winners coming home well away from the inside rail.

A good third from Crazy Buddies in race eight after sitting wide throughout paved the way for Purton to win the last on Benno Yung Tin-pang-trained Ishvara with a similar trip.

"I wanted to go forward and Benno wanted me to try to get cover - in the end, we didn't do either," said Purton.

"But the horse has some well-known issues with his breathing equipment and I think sitting out there on him wasn't the worst thing.

"With no horse in front of him, it meant he didn't have to stop and start and that's always the thing that brings them undone with those issues."

Yung said Luger, one of the top Derby hopefuls on Sunday week, also had breathing issues.

"So maybe Ishvara will still be able to climb up to the higher class races despite that," Yung said.

John Size chipped in with his usual winner a meeting and Ensuring (Brett Prebble) opened his winning account at just his sixth start.

"It's a good effort from him to win so soon because he is a real stayer - the 1,800m tonight was probably as short as he's going to want it," Prebble said.

Olivier Doleuze picked up a suspension on Snowhooves in race five, but will start it after the Dubai World Cup meeting. Matthew Chadwick was also hit with a careless riding ban (race eight).