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Sun Mirage came under an inspiring ride from leading apprentice jockey Wong Chin Chuen to claim the $60,000 RDA Cup 2017, a Class 4 race over 1200m on Sunday.
Last year’s champion apprentice always held the Statue Of Liberty four-year-old in touch with the frontrunning line before stoking him up in the straight where he, however, still had a major challenge ahead.
Short-priced favourite and juvenile Group 2 winner (Aushorse Golden Horseshoe) Lim's Racer (Danny Beasley) was about to draw on level terms with race-leader Changbai Mountain (Mohd Firdaus) in a decisive move that at that point looked a no-brainer towards a first-up win at her racing comeback.
But the lack of racing fitness eventually told on the Red Giant three-year-old who was the one to come off the worse from the tussle, even struggling to get past Changbai Mountain. Not Sun Mirage ($16), who kept grinding it out to finish over the top of the duelling pair and score with three parts of a length to spare from Changbai Mountain with Lim’s Racer third another half-a-length away.
The winning time was 1min 10.16secs for the 1200m on the Short Course.
Wong, who has partnered the Cheng Ting Kong-owned sprinter at all his starts bar two, said that Lim’s Racer was the main danger, but if there was any chance of lowering her boom, the plan was not to get run off their feet too early.
“The pace was fast and I didn’t want to be too far away as he’s only got a short burst,” said the Malaysian rider.
“He was making up good ground at the 600m, and he kept finding to win a nice race.”
Koh praised the top apprentice jockey for his stellar handling of his third winner for the season. The Singaporean later rounded up a double three events later with Knight Spirit who had Koh Teck Huat astride in the $35,000 Class 5 race over 2000m.
“There was a good pace to the race. He settles better in his races now,” said Koh the trainer about Sun Mirage.
“CC knows this horse well and knew what he had to do. It was a perfect ride.
“It’s great to train a winner in a race named after an association who does a great job for the disabled.”
Sun Mirage has now taken his record to two wins and five placings from 10 starts for stakes money around the $90,000 mark for the Macau-based Mr Cheng.