From our friends at SCMP.....
Injury means Kingdom's Tokyo trip cancelled
ALAN AITKEN
Trainer Ricky Yiu Poon-fie is still hopeful of getting world champion sprinter Sacred Kingdom to the post to defend his Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint in December, despite an injury which will keep him sidelined for the immediate future.
A tilt at the Sprinters' Stakes in Japan next month is now off the agenda, replaced by at least six weeks of rest after Yiu revealed a possible hairline fracture of Sacred Kingdom's sesamoid bone on the near foreleg.
Sacred Kingdom had indicated all was not perfect with him when he trialled "only fairly" last Tuesday morning and he was found to be lame with a suspected stone bruise in a subsequent veterinary examination.
"After he was a little disappointing in his barrier trial, we thought he had a bruised toe which would come right quickly. And after two or three days he was sound but just not moving as comfortably as he usually does," Yiu said at yesterday's Happy Valley barrier trials.
"He seemed 95 per cent sound so we decided to check everything over again and we found a faint shadow on the sesamoid. I expect he will be OK in a couple of days but not sound enough to put any hard work into him for Japan, so that trip is cancelled."
Yiu said the path for Sacred Kingdom now would involve "six or seven weeks of just going steady".
However, he was not ruling out having the gelding ready for a first-up start in the Hong Kong Sprint on December 14, the race which he won in such devastating style last year to vault to the top of world sprint rankings.
"We will x-ray the injury again in about four weeks, and obviously what we do then depends on the progress of it," Yiu said.
"At this stage, I am still optimistic that he can be fit for that race but if there is any doubt, his preparation will stop.
"The owner and myself, we have all the patience in the world and if we have to miss the international race then it isn't the end of the world. There are plenty of nice races later in the season for Sacred Kingdom."
While the trainer was disappointed at the injury, he wasn't describing the problem's emergence as bad luck but as a blessing.
"Maybe it was good luck because we found it. If we had kept going with him, Sacred Kingdom could have been very badly injured with no chance to come back again," Yiu said.
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