On a day of record betting turnover, locally-trained horses won three of the four Hong Kong International Races at Sha Tin last Sunday.
A visit to the free-to-enter Hong Kong Racing Museum which overlooks the bend after the stands at Happy Valley racecourse gives an interesting insight into the sport’s development in the former British colony.
Racing in Hong Kong began as an amateur form of entertainment among the ex-pats in those colonial days but, for what remains a small-scale racing jurisdiction with no breeding industry of its own and a population of only 1,250 horses, it punches well above its weight nowadays and there was a clear demonstration of that at the Hong Kong International Races, or ‘Turf World Championships’, at Sha Tin on Sunday.
The most eye-opening fact to be taken away from that museum visit was that the Hong Kong Jockey Club ranks in the world’s top ten for charitable donations, putting it in the same league as other wealthy benefactors such as Bill Gates.
It’s no wonder, then, that it also has the resources to make three of the four contests that form the Hong Kong International Races – the Sprint, Mile and mile-and-a-quarter Cup – the world’s most valuable races on turf over those respective distances. Those same resources also mean that Hong Kong imports world-class bloodstock these days which, this year, resulted in those same three races all being won by locally-trained horses.
But the other HKIR event, the Vase, is very much the weak spot as far as the locals are concerned as very few races in the Hong Kong calendar are run over as far as a mile and a half. Only three times in its history has it not gone abroad, and Japan again claimed the latest renewal, though not with their most high-profile contender.
Glory Vase, seeking a third win in the race on his final racecourse appearance, finished only third behind the mare Win Marilyn who was produced from well off the pace to gain the Group 1 victory that eluded her hitherto at home. Runner-up was the Andre Fabre-trained Godolphin gelding Botanik, but that was as good as it was going to get all afternoon for both the sizeable Japanese raiding party and for the Europeans who lacked a single representative from Britain this year.
The Vase favourite was Stone Age, one of two runners for Ballydoyle, but he succeeded only in adding to the dismal record of horses drawn in stall one in that contest which now reads 0-29.
Hong Kong’s punters have a wealth of information and stats like that one at their disposal, available in either the race-card or on the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s website, and one of the most interesting for the UK visitor – if only because such information simply doesn’t exist at all back home – is the recording of horses’ race-day weights.
The vast majority tip the scales at between about 1050 to 1250 lb (Hong Kong uses metric for race distances and imperial for weights, both horses and jockeys) but there were some outliers to note. At one extreme was the little Japanese mare Lei Papale, who contested the Cup weighing in at just 970 lb, while the heaviest horse in action on the day at 1315 lb was Mighty Stride in one of the six-furlong handicaps.
The strapping Australian-bred chestnut certainly took the eye beforehand in the parade ring and proved he more than just looked the part by going on to win his race. Only a four-year-old and now the winner of both his starts, he looks the type to carry on progressing through the grades.
Six handicaps made up the rest of the ten-race card besides the four HKIR contests and a nice touch was that all of them commemorated notable past HKIR winners, namely Beauty Generation, Falvelon, Lord Kanaloa, Jim And Tonic, Maurice and Highland Reel.
There might not have been any British-trained horses in action on the afternoon but a couple of Englishmen teamed up for success in the Sprint, with Ryan Moore winning on the Richard Gibson-trained Wellington. Moore is one of only four jockeys to have won each of the four HKIR contests at least once, while Gibson has been successful at the meeting in the past too, though was still training in France when opening his HKIR account, Doctor Dino winning two editions of the Vase in 2007 and 2008.
Wellington is Hong Kong’s reigning champion sprinter (Moore was substituting for his regular rider Alexis Badel, sidelined by injury) but despite legitimate excuses for his defeat when found to be lame after his previous start and being better off at the weights this time, punters made up-and-coming rival Lucky Sweynesse favourite to beat him. However, he was very much un-Lucky Sweynesse on this occasion, getting no sort of run in the straight.
Favourite backers had their fingers burned again in the Mile, a two-horse race according to the betting between old rivals Golden Sixty and California Spangle.
Like Glory Vase earlier on, Golden Sixty was bidding to become only the second horse to win three HKIR contests – the Mile had been won by Good Ba Ba between 2007 and 2009 – and, as Hong Kong’s reigning Horse of the Year, was the highest-profile runner on the day, his image adorning the cover of the race-card and other publicity around the track.
Younger opponent California Spangle had come off worse in both previous encounters with Golden Sixty and is a confirmed front runner but was headed mid-race by free-going stablemate Beauty Joy who therefore gave him a target to aim at in the straight. California Spangle duly regained the advantage once in line for home and maintained it to the line, with the confidently-ridden Golden Sixty failing to produce his customary devastating turn of foot and only able to reduce the deficit to a neck.
Already the jockey with the most wins in HKIR contests over the years, Zac Purton’s win on California Spangle took his total to ten.
California Spangle’s victory was a further boost to the already strong claims of Romantic Warrior in the next race, the Hong Kong Cup, the most valuable HKIR contest with total prize money of HK $34m.
Beaten only once in nine starts beforehand, Romantic Warrior had twice gotten the better of California Spangle the previous season, notably in the Hong Kong Derby in March. On an increasingly gloomy afternoon, with the cloud and cool breeze in contrast to the warm sunshine in the days leading up to the meeting, the floodlights were already on and the atmosphere was building, helped by the fact that the start for this race takes place in front of the stands which welcomed their first proper crowd for the meeting since 2019.
Romantic Warrior duly delivered with what was the most impressive performance of the afternoon, James McDonald having the luxury of checking the big screen and putting his whip down in the closing stages after sending Romantic Warrior into the lead approaching the final furlong.
It might be premature to declare Golden Sixty’s reign over just yet, but in Romantic Warrior and California Spangle he has two serious pretenders to his Horse of the Year title.
Incidentally, while much of the Hong Kong horse population was bred in Australia, both Romantic Warrior and California Spangle are triumphs for Irish breeding. Romantic Warrior, a son of Acclamation who himself finished fifth in the 2003 Hong Kong Sprint on his final start, was among the first batch of yearlings purchased on behalf of the Hong Kong Jockey Club by Michael Kinane who won the 2002 Hong Kong Cup on the locally-trained rank outsider Precision.
Romantic Warrior's jockey, New Zealand-born McDonald, who received his trophy as the ‘World’s Best Jockey of 2022’ at a gala dinner on Friday evening, added to an excellent meeting for antipodean riders after the earlier successes of reigning Hong Kong champion Purton and fellow Australian Win Marilyn’s rider Damian Lane. But there was to be no fairytale ending to Brazilian Joao Moreira’s career in Hong Kong. A four-time champion since coming to Hong Kong and Purton’s chief rival in recent seasons, Moreira broke records in his Hong Kong stint, riding eight winners on one card and setting a new high for winners in a season. But he recently handed in his Hong Kong licence having struggled with a hip injury in recent seasons and bid an emotional farewell to his fans at a ceremony before racing held in Sha Tin’s striking roofed parade ring.
And in case you’re wondering how the Hong Kong Jockey Club is in a position to rank among the world’s most generous institutions when it comes to charitable donations, look no further than the staggering figure for the day’s betting turnover – a record HK $1.729 billion, or more than £172 million.
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