(WE TOLD YOU SO!!!)WILL CRUZ CONTROL WIN THE DAY?

Tony Cruz’s Best Eleven has only its fourth start in Hong Kong and its second at Happy Valley tomorrow.

Whatever “Cruzy” has done with the horse, it has worked.

Quite an ordinary horse when it ran in New South Wales, it won well at Shatin and, at its last start on the same course, was only just beaten by Lucky Follow Me which was ridden with great vigour by the great Gerard Mosse.

Our only concern is that Lucky Follow Me ran at Happy Valley last week with Darren Beadman taking over from Mosse and put in an extremely disappointing run despite being backed.

This time, Mosse jumps aboard on Best Eleven and time will tell if he makes a difference to the horse’s seventh placing the last time it ran at the Valley.

Also running at Happy Valley on Wednesday is another newcomer to Hong Kong in Ricky Yiu’s Happy Champion.

The galloper, despite a having a wide barrier to overcome, stormed home to win at Happy Valley so it certainly knows the course.

Will it make it back-to-back wins?

Drawn out wide again and running over the same distance as its last win with, again, Alex Lai aboard, we don’t think it will be a case of history repeating itself.

There are plenty of speedsters like Lucky Turbo- made up of that lethal combination of trainer Danny Shum and jockey Darren Beadman- and Lucky Red with Douglas Whyte drawn under Happy Champion.

Odds are that, this time, it will be caught wide for most of the journey and with competitive jockeys like Beadman and Whyte making sure that Alex Lai never gets in.

Looking at the rest of the card, as usual, Douglas Whyte appears to have a very good book of rides and with many of them having ideal draws.

Going by his incredible strike rate at the last two meetings, The Durban Demon could strike again with 2-3 winners without surprising.