The first race at Sha Tin last Sunday won’t go down as the best of the day, and might only just scrape into the top 10, but there were some young, lightly raced ones to put into the black book out of it.

Fantastic Show was an improver each run as a griffin and pleasing to the eye the way he won his final run of the campaign and he has continued that progress during the summer.

Now this wasn’t an especially good race but new three-year-olds with 133 pounds don’t have a great deal in their favour, even in Class Four, as their rivals are mostly older, more mature and more experienced.

So there was plenty to like about the way the Me Tsui Yu-sak-trained youngster was finding the line late behind Grade One over 1,200m.

Slow to begin, as he has been in most starts, Fantastic Show even looked to be having trouble holding on to the back of the field at one stage before applying himself well in the final 200m.

There is no doubt that Fantastic Show needs further and maybe the questions as his season progresses will be how much further and what will his ideal distance ultimately be?

He looks assured of running a strong 1,600m but 1,400m next time should be enough at this stage to see him being competitive.

While Fantastic Show has always looked to have some sort of ability and is blossoming steadily, the David Ferraris-trained My Honey jumped out of the ground with his fourth in the race.

Start could be the key for Fantastic Show: Nash Rawiller

His trials had only been fair before his first run, and his two previous starts suggested later rather than sooner but he was much improved on the weekend.

He still doesn’t look any great talent but these International Sale Griffins do improve with racing and Sunday’s run was a sign that he might be much closer to an early win than we had thought.

In the next couple of months, we will start to see some really talented unraced ones unveiled in Class Four, so maybe he needs to get his maiden put away before that happens but the next couple of runs should give him an opportunity.