Alex Hammond: Watch the Crown | Horses to follow and look ahead to Sha Tin

Hi everyone, I hope you are all doing well? We are all adjusting to the ‘new normal’ whatever that means for you. For me it comprises of some American racing on Sky Sports Racing, helping my best friend out on her farm (loving the baby lambs), long dog walks with my crew and plenty of fitness training in the garden.

Thanks to the former I’m also getting the opportunity to interview some of our racing personalities on the Stateside show, finding out what they are up to and what they are looking forward to when racing does resume.

On Monday it was the turn of racing power couple Hollie Doyle and Tom Marquand. Aussie Tom had just returned from his successful stint Down Under and surprisingly wasn’t suffering from jet lag and looked remarkably bright given his long flight home.

Turns out Hollie and Tom had already been out on their bikes in a bid to maintain their eye-watering fitness regimes. In researching the interview I found out some information about what they put themselves through to be at their peak on a regular basis.

Under normal circumstances you’d find Tom running and cycling and Hollie in the gym where she has been known to dead lift 120kg and can squat with 60kg! To put that into perspective, 120kg is the weight of an adult tiger and is a couple of kilos more than a giant panda and 60kg is around nine and a half stones. No bad for someone who stands at five foot tall!

Back to the racing though and I asked them both for a horse they are looking forward to riding when we get back racing.

Hollie picked one from the Archie Watson stable called The Perfect Crown. He’s by an Australian stallion called Hallowed Crown who is best known for being the sire of Colette, the recent winner of The Australian Oaks on the same card that Addeybb won the Queen Elizabeth Stakes recently. The Perfect Crown is the best of his European-trained progeny and according to Hollie could be really smart this year.

She was on board for his only start at two where he won easily at Chelmsford and then was reunited with him when he returned at Lingfield at the end of February to be a promising third in the listed Spring Cup. The race at Lingfield didn’t really go to plan, but Hollie said he’s a horse they are looking forward to running on the turf.

Tom went for Born With Pride who is trained in Newmarket by William Haggas. She’s a filly that holds entries in the 1000 Guineas and Irish Oaks, which shows the potential her connections hope she has. She won at 20/1 on her debut in a mile listed race at Newmarket back in November on heavy ground and Tom said she’s a filly with an impeccable pedigree who is gorgeous looking and should get a trip.

So maybe we won’t see the best of her until she races over middle distances, but it seems she is expected to be very smart. Incidentally, Tom is still 7/1 with Sky Bet to be champion jockey this year, he’s keen to win it too.

Another famous face I interviewed on Sky Sports Racing was Rab Havlin who gets to sit on some unbelievable horses at John Gosden’s Clarehaven Stables.

Unsurprisingly he could have given me an endless list of equine talent, but narrowed it down to two unexposed types. One horse he’s looking forward to seeing run in 2020 is a filly that only ran once in 2019 and didn’t win a race. Her name is Frankly Darling and as her name intimates, she is a daughter of the mighty Frankel.

She should be another filly with stamina to burn with a stout pedigree on both the sire and dam side and she showed plenty of promise to be second in a mile maiden at Yarmouth in October, with her inexperience costing her that day.

The fact she was given such a favourable mention by Havlin speaks volumes.

The other horse he highlighted was Encipher, a Siyouni colt owned by Godolphin. He has already shown he’s pretty useful with a win on his second outing at Newbury. He was sent off favourite that day having shown promise at Haydock on his debut and is another horse with a classic entry (2000 Guineas) so more is expected of him. Who knows where we will see these horses in action, or when/if/where the classics will be run, but regardless of that, they are horses to put in your tracker.

Finally, the international racing is keeping the show on the road and on Sunday on Sky Sports Racing you can see Champions Day in Hong Kong with three Group 1 contests at Sha Tin racecourse.

There are some real (local) stars on show and I’m hoping to unearth a winner or two.

At 8.20am the first of those group 1 races takes place, the Chairman’s Sprint Prize over six furlongs. I’m hoping to see Aethero bounce back from his disappointing run in the Sprint Cup earlier this month. The race couldn’t have gone worse for him that day and I’m happy to put a line through it. He’s 2/1 second favourite with Sky Bet.

The second of the top prizes is the Champions Mile which takes place at 9am. I thought Beauty Generation’s star was waning, but he silenced his doubters with a win in the Chairman’s Trophy last time out, but I think one of the horses that finished behind him can turn the form around on Sunday.

Waikuku may not have been fully tuned up that day and I was disappointed to see him well beaten. However, with another three weeks training under his belt, I hope he’s firing on all cylinders and at 2/1 with Sky Bet I’m happy to take on the odds on favourite here.

The third and final Group 1 is the 1m2f Queen Elizabeth Cup at 9.40am where Exultant is hot favourite for racing legend Tony Cruz, who was a top class jockey and is now training with a huge amount of success in Hong Kong.

Cruz saddled the 1-2 in the Hong Kong Gold Cup back in February, but it was his outsider Time Warp that beat his odds on favourite stablemate that day. Exultant was known as Irishcorrespondent when trained by Mick Halford as a three-year-old for whom he finished third in the Irish 2000 Guineas behind Churchill. He’s smart and his 2/5 price tag (with Sky Bet) reflects that.