Richard Oliver did it on Friday and on Sunday it was the turn of Ioannis Poullis to make his Busan breakthrough and ride his first Korean winner. The Cypriot jockey did it the hard way too, guiding 60/1 chance Jeongsang Korea to victory in a hard-fought concluding race 6.

Poullis debuted at Busan just before the Lunar New Year holiday but started in earnest this Friday when he made the places for the first time. His book of four rides on Sunday looked uninspiring and so they had proved to be with his first three mounts of the afternoon only beating one horse between them.

That all changed in the last though as Poullis brought Jeongsang Korea, who last won in December 2017, through late to score by just over a length in the 1200M class 2 contest. 90/1 chance Ubaki got closest to the winner, making for an unlikely 2700/1 exacta.

It was a good day for the most established foreign rider at the track. Franco Da Silva won race 1 on odds-on favourite Tongil Hanguk and then claimed the spoils in the feature 2200M Class 1 Handicap on Jumbo Blade. World Day, who came into the race having won eight of his previous nine starts was sent off as the odds-on favourite, but he reared up as the gates opened, instantly losing too much ground to be a serious factor.

Meanwhile Da Silva kept Jumbo Blade handy and he was able to comfortably outsprint top-weight Great King and the fast-finishing Choegang Thunder for a four-length win. With that victory Jumbo Blade, a four-year-old US-bred colt by Mineshaft, moved on to five wins from ten career starts.

Seoul saw a similarly long-distance feature race but there were no problems for the odds-on favourite in the capital. Road Winner was an also-ran in the Grand Prix Stakes at the end of 2018 but had subsequently won over 1800M and back up to 2300M today, had little difficulty in dispatching eight class 1 rivals by a comfortable five-length margin. A four-year-old by Discreet Cat, he moves onto seven wins from ten outings.