The Happy Valley Report – September 21
Michael Cox runs the rule over a challenging eight-race Happy Valley card.

Rail position: B
Track: Good
Weather: Hot and dry during the day, top of 31 degrees.
Size's consistency still counts in Class 5s
Raging Blaze isn’t your typical John Size-trained runner to be tipping here. Rated 26, the five-year-old has lurched through two winless seasons and 16 starts to get where he is now: at the bottom of Class 5.
He rattled off a career-best last week over 1000m and a step up to 1200m in Race 4 is just what the sprinter needs to provide owners with some much-needed joy.
Jockey Club officials seem intent on torturing Triple Trio players, or at least boosting a jackpot that already sits at more than HK$37million (US$4.7m), by including a Class 5 to consider for the first leg of the TT.
Combining the records of the starters in a Class 5 is always a fun way to express just how tricky they are to find a reliable type and this lot are a combined seven from 206. This might just be Raging Blaze’s birthday, and he at least provides a reliable banker for those chasing TT riches.
From the trials
‘Drops two points, switches to the Valley, blinkers on first time and Zac Purton for Luke Currie.’
It sounds like a classic Caspar Fownes move but this is the scenario for another Size runner: Drops Of God in Race 7.
Of course, Purton has fallen out of favour with Fownes but he now finds himself as a key rider for Size, while his rival Joao Moreira has shifted seats from Size to Fownes.
Drops Of God’s last win was from a simpler time, close to 12 months ago, when Moreira would win on Size’s short-priced chances and they would climb quickly through the grades. That rise may have happened too fast, but Drops Of God still logged some solid performances; a Class 2 placing ahead of horses like Sight Success, Winning Method and Keep You Warm certainly reads as a decent reference for this; and the gelding is now back down to his last winning mark of 75.