The fat lady has not sung yet, but Alwin Tan’s fans can probably hear her clearing her throat after the current leading trainer widened the space with a winning treble on Friday night.
A race-to-race double with Rainbow Royal and Smart Master got the night off to a perfect start before Big Banker completed the rout two races later to take his score to 79 winners and sit 12 wins clear of nearest rival Patrick Shaw, a break which is mathematically still reversible with 10 meetings left, but which not many can conceivably see the South African pulling off, not even his biggest supporters.
But spectacular turnarounds have happened before, and Tan is not breathing a word about that first title which he had coveted for a while now, after two runner-up finishes in the last two seasons. He is just going around like a sniper – one kill at a time.
“My horses are running well and it’s (championship) looking good. It’s all a team’s work and also good planning,” said Tan.
“Currently, I seem to have many sprinters, like those first two (Rainbow Royal and Smart Master) who won tonight. It can sometimes be hard to make a decision which one to run, but so far so good.
“Smart Master won down in Maiden company and back in trip. He needs more ground, but the fast pace suited him tonight.
“Rainbow Royal is a jump-and-go type of horse you can’t restrain too much, and Harry (A’Isisuhairi Kasim) knows him very well.
“He’s still young and I’m glad he was able to win despite the step-up in class. It’s good for his owner (Royal Stable).”
The three-year-old colt by Captain Sonador, who scored three runs back with A’Isisuhairi, took the $60,000 Class 4 Division 1 race over 1100m by the scruff of the neck when he jumped to the lead from barrier No 2.
The Malaysian rider waited for as long as he could before slipping some reins to the $17 favourite, even though he had a posse of horses, mainly Classified (Michael Rood) and The Wind (Mark Ewe), breathing down his neck at the 300m pole.
They never came within a sniffing distance. The moment A’Isisuhairi let loose, Rainbow Royal lengthened up a notch before going hard against the rails to go and post a one-length win from Classified with The Wind third another three parts of a length away. The winning time was 1min 5.65secs for the 1100m on Polytrack.
“He won a very honest race, but he’s still learning. I think he wants a bit longer as well,” said A’Isisuhairi.
“I didn’t want to let him go too early tonight. The last time, once he passed the field, he stopped.
“This time, I was waiting for something to come near to keep going.”
Smart Master ($87) was not as widely expected in the next race, the $35,000 Maiden race over 1100m, but given a copybook ride by John Sundradas, the vastly-improved Reaan three-year-old finished the best to defeat Ashqar (Wong Chin Chuen) by 2 ½ lengths. The winning time was 1min 6.05secs for the 1100m on the Polytrack.
As for Big Banker (Olivier Placais), he has been knocking on the door for a while and the Rothsay four-year-old justified his favourite tag of $17 with a dominant display to win the $35,000 Class 5 race over 1700m by a gap of 3 ½ lengths from Verglatica (Vlad Duric) with Pinyin (Sam Subian) third another ¾ length away. The winning time was 1min 47.72secs.
Shaw did keep his dwindling title hopes alive, though, when he pulled one back later with the well-backed Mighty Kenny (Nooresh Juglall, $19) who came with a sustained run to land the penultimate event, the $60,000 Class 4 race over 1600m.
