HOUSE OF FUN & VOLITATION

11th February 2017

The winners just keeping coming for Price Bloodstock in Hong Kong as we get ever closer to the 500 mark and it was two of the season’s success stories who provided more momentum at Sha Tin when House Of Fun won his fourth for the campaign and Volitation his third.

Volitation did a good job after three months without a race, holding on to win against race fit horses despite having to chase a very fast speed.

“It’s not a situation you watch comfortably from the stand when you see those sectionals – your first thought is whether the horse is going to be fit enough,” trainer John Size explained. “You don’t want the fresh horse getting stretched out of his comfort zone by that pace. As it was, they were all pretty tired the last bit of the race, even the ones chasing, so Volitation managed to last it out but he will sleep well this week.”

That took Volitation to 4 wins from 12 starts, all over the Sha Tin 1,400m, and took his prizemoney past $2.6 million and House Of Fun has polished his record up very nicely this season, taking it to 4 wins from 10 starts, $3 million in stakes and he earned an extra $750,000 in a Jockey Club high achievement bonus on Saturday as he broke into Class Two successfully.

“He’s got to Class Two probably a little quicker than is ideal after the handicapper put him up quite a lot for his last win but his record is starting to look quite good and he won well enough today,” Size said. “When he hasn’t looked quite as good is when the tempo slows in his face and he gets keen but a good even pace today helped him out, he found his spot following the pace without much fuss and it was straightforward enough from there.”

Between his big win in Class Three and Saturday’s victory, there had been a notable flop but jockey Joao Moreira

“Based on his win two runs ago, you’d expect he would handle Class Two and he has done that – I thought that there were genuine excuses when he was beaten in between and it is hard to criticize what a job this horse is doing. Four wins from seven starts this season is pretty good,” Moreira said.