John Ingles highlights how the British and Irish runners have fared at the Hong Kong International Races.
It might come as a surprise that the last British-trained winner at the Hong Kong International Races was more than ten years ago now. The fact that there have been 13 Japanese-trained winners – spread across all four races – since Red Cadeaux got up to beat Japan’s Jaguar Mail by a short head in the 2012 Vase under Gerald Mosse perhaps goes a long way to explaining a lack of British success in recent years.
Apart from a more potent challenge from Japan nowadays than in the early years of the meeting – they send a total of 13 runners this year – another reason for British runners failing to make an impact lately is surely the strength of the local horses who punch well above their weight given the modest size of Hong Kong’s racehorse population.
There were no British-trained runners at all at last year’s HKIR meeting and, officially at least, Highfield Princess is GB’s sole representative this year, though West Wind Blows, trained by Simon and Ed Crisford, is a second Brit to all intents and purposes, even if he’s flying the UAE flag here.
But if John Quinn’s mare, who had a spin around Sha Tin’s all-weather track on Friday morning, does end the barren spell for British runners at HKIR this year, that won’t be her biggest achievement. She’d also make history by becoming the first horse trained in Europe – not just Britain – to win the Hong Kong Sprint since it was founded in 1999. With a few exceptions down the years, the Sprint has been very much the locals’ race and only two runners from Europe have finished placed; Benbaun was third in 2006 and Sole Power, winner of the King’s Stand Stakes earlier that season, finished runner-up for Eddie Lynam in 2013, beating all the Hong Kong sprinters that year only to come up against Japan’s top-class Lord Kanaloa who was winning it for a second time.
Fresh from her latest Group 1 win in the Prix de l’Abbaye, Highfield Princess deliberately missed the Breeders’ Cup to concentrate on Hong Kong and she’ll be the first runner from Europe in the Sprint since Sir Dancealot finished last in 2018.
If Highfield Princess were to win the Hong Kong Sprint, she wouldn’t be the first winner to have been trained in Malton as the 2015 winner Peniaphobia started his career there as a two-year-old with Richard Fahey before being exported.
The Mile has scarcely been any easier for British-trained horses to win, though a couple managed to do so early in the race’s history. Docksider won the very first running of the race in its current format for John Hills in 1999 (before it gained Group 1 status a year later), while Godolphin’s Firebreak was successful for Saeed bin Suroor and Frankie Dettori five years later.
Dettori and bin Suroor also won two editions of the Cup, with Fantastic Light (2000) and Ramonti (2007), while in between Dettori also won on Falbrav in 2003, rounding off a terrific season for Luca Cumani’s globetrotter who also won the Prix d’Ispahan, Eclipse, Juddmonte International and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes that year.
As well as being the last British trainer to win the Vase in 2012, Ed Dunlop holds the same distinction in the Hong Kong Cup which he won two years earlier with Snow Fairy. Dunlop’s other Oaks winner Ouija Board also distinguished herself at the meeting, becoming her trainer’s first Vase winner in 2005.
British-trained horses had a fine record in the Vase until the last ten years or so with a total of eight wins. Luso won consecutive renewals for Clive Brittain in 1996 and 1997 before it became a Group 1, while Daliapour for Sir Michael Stoute, Phoenix Reach for Andrew Balding, Collier Hill who began his career in a Catterick bumper for Alan Swinbank, and the previous season’s St Leger winner Mastery for Saeed bin Suroor were the others to be successful.
Irish success in Hong Kong has something of a longer history and it won’t come as too much of a surprise that that’s thanks to Dermot Weld, who, two years before Vintage Crop’s more famous pioneering success in the Melbourne Cup, became the first European trainer to win in Hong Kong with the Moyglare Stud-owned Additional Risk. That victory came in the first running of the Hong Kong Invitation Bowl, a seven-furlong contest which didn’t even have Group status at the time, but was later to become what is now the Hong Kong Mile. Sir Michael Stoute won the same race with Soviet Line in 1994.
It was to be a while before the next Irish trainer tasted success in Hong Kong but Jim Bolger became the first to do so in the meeting’s current format when his three-year-old filly Alexander Goldrun held on by a short head to win the 2004 Hong Kong Cup, following up a first Group 1 success in the Prix de l’Opera.
The high-class Alexander Goldrun had two more unsuccessful attempts to win the same race but her trainer has no doubt followed the exploits of Hong Kong’s current champion Golden Sixty with plenty of interest as he trained his dam Gaudeamus to win three races as a two-year-old, including the Group 2 Debutante Stakes at Leopardstown.
Sole Power’s bold bid for Eddie Lynam in the Hong Kong Sprint has already been mentioned but it’s Aidan O’Brien who has supplied Ireland’s last three winners, all of those victories coming in the Vase. O’Brien had his first runner at the meeting in 2001 but it took until 2015 before his breakthrough success with three-year-old colt Highland Reel who beat the previous year’s winner Flintshire into second. That victory has encouraged more regular participation from Ballydoyle ever since, with Highland Reel himself finishing second a year later before winning it again on his final start as a five-year-old which made him Europe’s leading money-earner at the time.
O’Brien’s other Vase winner was another three-year-old, Mogul in 2020, and he has a three-year-old representative again this year, the filly Warm Heart, winner of the Yorkshire Oaks and Prix Vermeille and runner-up in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf last time. Irish Champion Stakes winner Luxembourg bids to become his trainer’s first winner of the Cup – after placed efforts from the stable’s Magic Wand and Magical – while Cairo in the Mile and Aesop’s Fables in the Sprint mean that O’Brien has a runner in each race this year.
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