Matt Brocklebank checks in with an excited Karl Burke before boarding the flight to Hong Kong where the North Yorkshire trainer bids to stretch his wings in yet another major racing region.
Karl Burke admitted to getting a “monkey off his back” when Royal Champion won the Bahrain International Trophy late last year.
The Middleham trainer had previously gone a long way to making his name on the French Group 1 scene through Lord Shanakill and star mare Laurens, claimed his first Classic success thanks to the filly Fallen Angel in Ireland a couple of years ago, and all the while had bossed some of the most prestigious days in Britain courtesy of Quiet Reflection, Havana Grey, Poptronic and others. In 2015, he saddled Odeliz to win a Group race in Italy.
Ambitious beyond doubt, Burke has always been willing to ship horses wherever he thinks they can maximise their potential, but he had never before saddled a winner outside of Europe. Bahrain clearly felt like a breakthrough moment.
"We'd had a second at the Breeders' Cup,” said Burke. “And years ago, I had a couple of low-grade Arab-race horses who won in my name in Dubai, but since then all I've had is placed horses. Plenty of placed horses in Dubai, but I'd never had a winner, so it’s been great that we’ve had a winner there at Meydan this winter as well.”
Still owned by the family of the late Sheikh Mohammed Obaid who died just before the turn of this year, Royal Champion has seemingly opened the floodgates, having gone on to claim further lucrative international honours himself in the Neom Turf Cup at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in mid-February.
Now the eight-year-old provides Warwickshire-born Burke with a first shot at success in one of the Far East’s most competitive racing jurisdictions as he takes on local middle-distance icon and three-time winner Romantic Warrior in Sunday’s QEII Cup on FWD Champions Day at Sha Tin.
“It's been a great winter for getting some good Group winners outside of Europe,” he said. “But Hong Kong is a different challenge altogether.
“I've been racing there a few times, but I've never had runners in Hong Kong.”
Burke grew to appreciate the love of the thoroughbred through his Irish-born publican father, visiting Leicester and Warwick in particular during his youth, and became an apprentice jockey before enjoying winners on the Flat and then over jumps “at a moderate level”.
Having first taken out a training licence in 1991, he eventually wound up at the historic Spiggot Lodge in North Yorkshire after initially operating a small livery business in the East Midlands, moving to a farm near Cheltenham, and for a couple of years occupying some stables on the Hamilton Road, Newmarket.
During his riding days, Burke partnered the first of 50 winners on a horse trained by his future father-in-law Alan Jarvis called The Britisher, and as conversation turns to the archetypal British subject matter of the HK climate, I'm reminded of the time Burke took me over to a quiet corner of his yard and tapped the thermometer.
“It hit 40 degrees Celsius the other day,” he grinned. That was the summer of 2022 and around the time Royal Champion first came to prominence for then-trainer Roger Varian, having that season claimed a valuable handicap win at Epsom - in the race before the Oaks.
Burke had to wait two and a half years to get his hands on the imposing bay, who had a brief stint in Australia where he nearly won a Group 2 race at Moonee Valley for Anthony and Sam Freedman.
Royal Champion has won five of his eight starts since moving back to Britain and linking up with Burke, not all those handful of wins having come in baking-hot conditions.
“I hadn’t really heard much from his previous trainers or anything, but I’d been following all the Sheikh Obaid horses after we’d first got some of them,” Burke said. “So, I'd seen what Royal Champion could do from the form in the book, and I was quite pleased when I got a phone call to ask whether I would take him.
“Sheikh Obaid was bringing him back from Australia, he'd only been down there six or seven months, but you could see as soon as he arrived that he’d travelled back over well, he came in good form and was working well straight away. He's definitely a horse that takes his travelling very well.
“He won at Lingfield on the all-weather and I said we’d have a go at the Winter Derby and that came off last winter. He was obviously a good horse then, but I think he improved quite rapidly through last summer.
"His performance in York (winning the Sky Bet York Stakes) was very good, just the style of it as much as anything. He beat a good horse of Ed Walker’s that day (Almaqam), and he beat him easily. He just progressed and I thought his run behind Delacroix in the Irish Champion Stakes was a cracking run too. Obviously, he confirmed that in Bahrain, and then onto Saudi.”
It's very much a numbers game in Hong Kong as 800 races make up 88 race days per season, with the equivalent of £150 million on average bet into pools at every one of those meetings. Burke knows all about figures as he has 138 registered horses in training for the 2026 campaign, while he sent out 134 winners domestically in 2025, earning total prize money in excess of £3.7million.
Royal Champion has picked up almost half that sum in his last couple of races in the Middle East.
“Sheikh Obaid wasn’t always mad keen to travel his horses, but he let me take him to Bahrain and he was over the moon with that win and agreed to me going straight to Saudi Arabia afterwards,” said Burke.
“Unfortunately, he didn't survive to see the Saudi run, but he would have loved the occasion and I'm sure he'll be watching down somewhere at the race in Hong Kong.”
This weekend Royal Champion runs for another massive pot - HK$30 million, around £2.88 million – and he goes with a realistic chance according to Burke.
He said: “If Royal Champion can keep up his level of form then he should run a big race. If he can put up a similar performance to Saudi, it will take a horse like Romantic Warrior at his best to beat him. Talking to some of the Hong Kong guys (analysts/handicappers), they give us a chance.
“The only slight doubt is, and Oisin Murphy picked up on it when he rode him last time out, is that maybe he's better going left-handed. Sha Tin is obviously right-handed, but I’m not totally convinced by that theory yet as he just seems pretty straightforward.”
Rather like his current flag-bearer, Burke would be the first to admit that he enjoys a bit of sun on his back – it states on his website that if he hadn't taken up training racehorses he would have ended up being a deckchair attendant on a Caribbean beach – and, with an older gelding evidently able to reproduce his best while being transported far and wide, you sense the trainer is going to make the most of the opportunity to broaden his own horizons yet again.
It will only be a flying visit, though, Burke saying: “I’ve got some important runners at Sandown on Friday, including Zeus Olympios, so I’m jumping on a plane at Heathrow on Friday night. I'll only get there Saturday lunchtime, so I won't have a lot of time but, with this horse in particular, he doesn't take any work.
“Once he’s landed, I’m sure it will be warm but he takes very little work and I've got good staff going out there, so they'll keep me informed how he is. He'll only have a couple of canters really, and maybe a light breeze. He likes to run fresh and we found that out from his two trips to the Middle East.
"Hopefully we’ll be able to celebrate in Hong Kong on Sunday evening."
Win, lose or draw, what could be next on Burke’s list of races and places to explore?
"We've never had runners in Australia,” he said. “That's always been an ambition of mine."
You can follow Matt's Hong Kong Diary throughout the week in the lead-up to Sunday's FWD Champions Day fixture at Sha Tin...
More from Sporting Life
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.
