Te Akau Singapore Sunday Double

It was terrific to see Te Akau Singapore trainer Donna Logan record another winning double for the successive weekend, with Olympia and King Arthur saluting the judge - both horses being raced by the Fortuna Syndication team. Donna now lies fifth on the Trainers' Premiership.

The Singapore Turf Club reports:

The planets had seemed to align for King Arthur when the final field was released for Sunday's $70,000 Class 3 race over 1000m, after the Fortuna NZ Racing Stable-owned four-year-old, drew gate one in a race that suited.

However, the Polytrack scamper looked a strong race on paper and with the smart Sun Ops (Manoel Nunes) resuming and the in-form Happy Moments (Benny Woodworth) also in the field, he would need to be at his best to win.

Win he did, with 3kgs-claimer Yusoff Fazli riding the perfect race on the $25 third-elect when using the inside gate to his advantage and stalking the favourite in Sun Ops ($14) throughout.

And when Sun Ops - who had to do some work early after a tardy start - got tired late, it was King Arthur who loomed the biggest danger and under hard riding by the promising Malaysian apprentice jockey, won comfortably by one length over the fast-finishing Sky Eye (Iskandar Rosman).

Sun Ops - who was first-up after a bleeding attack - held on manfully for third place, another three-quarters-of-a-length back and the winning time was 59.15secs on the Polytrack over 1000m.

Oddly - given his record on the Polytrack and more so over 1000m - spoke for itself, even trainer Donna Logan was a little surprised with the win.

“Yeah look, I thought the horse was a little bit big today, that he might improve for the run - we know he will,” explained Logan.

“We freshened him up for this race to progress on but obviously it worked.”

Logan, fresh herself after an overdue trip back to New Zealand, was also full of praise for her apprentice rider.

“We opted to claim the 3kgs with Yusoff and he rode him to instructions and he did well,” continued Logan.

“I said to Yusoff, you've drawn one and you've got to use the barrier draw.  But I just wanted him to be two or three wide when they turned for home - they seemed to be coming wider as the day's gone on - so he followed instructions to a hundred percent.”

And as a trainer, you can't ask for more than that.

A breathless Yusoff was understandably very happy when talking to presenter Raymond Yong, after the win.

“For me, he's a very good horse,” said Yusoff of his third winner for the season, putting him onto the fourth spot in the apprentice jockeys' premiership.

“This race was very strong but a lot of the horses are frontrunners, so my instructions were to just maybe sit behind (the) leader, (then) bring him out in the open in the straight.”