Racing Roundtable: 2024-25 Hong Kong Season Review

What Is The One Image That Stands Out As The Season’s Most Enduring Moment? 

Andrew Hawkins: It looked gimmicky, even a bit silly at the time, but Zac Purton ringing the bell after his record-breaking 1,814th Hong Kong win on View Of The World on January 22 will be a lasting memory. The Jockey Club had set up a bell at both Sha Tin and Happy Valley so that Purton could ring it after every victory from January 1, when he was at 1800 wins, as a countdown to the Hong Kong record for most wins all-time by a jockey. Purton played into it and so too did the previous record-holder Douglas Whyte. The gimmicky became a fond image and very much part of the story as Purton rang in a momentous milestone in Hong Kong racing history.

David Morgan: There was only a hair’s breadth in it. Romantic Warrior and Soul Rush were noses down together as they flashed past the Meydan winning post in the G1 Dubai Turf, but when the judge called the verdict, the Japanese horse took the spoils. That still image, the barely perceptible margin after 1800m of racing, left a sense that there was little justice in the result for a horse that had given so much in his three-race Middle-Eastern campaign.

Romantic Warrior’s G1 Jebel Hatta win at Meydan in January was a bit of a ‘gimme’ and won as expected; then the dirt track thriller in Riyadh saw Forever Young rally late to pass Hong Kong’s hero in one of the races of the century. The Dubai Turf was a chance to end on a high, but while the champ’s reputation lost nothing in defeat, that photo finish image was the difference between unbridled elation and a flat feeling of ‘if only.’ 

Jack Dawling: Zac Purton blowing a kiss to a camera on the inside of the track aboard Ka Ying Rising in November’s Jockey Club Sprint perfectly illustrated the dominance of one superstar in the saddle and the emergence of another superstar in the world’s sprinting ranks.

He wasn’t even a Group 1 winner at the time, but Ka Ying Rising stamped himself as a potential great when he smashed Sacred Kingdom’s Sha Tin 1200m track record that day as Purton uncharacteristically gave a cheeky salute to the Jockey Club’s new camera. The ease with which Ka Ying Rising quickened clear from his rivals was captured beautifully by that shot and was a sight to behold.

Michael Cox: It’s certainly not an uplifting image, but the carnage following the second of two horrific falls on February 9 at Sha Tin sticks in the mind and it marked a turning point in the season. 

That the brutal accidents happened at the 44th fixture of the 88-meeting season only added to their pivotal nature, not to mention fuel superstition among sections of the local media in the first two weeks of Lunar New Year.

The first fall ended Vincent Ho’s season and set him on a painstaking path of rehabilitation, the second halted Zac Purton’s march towards a potentially record-breaking campaign and saw him miss a Group 1 aboard Ka Ying Rising. Combined, the incidents resulted in a mid-season mini upheaval of the depleted jockey roster. 

Ryan Moore, Tom Marquad and Hollie Doyle arrived on cameos to make up for the jockey shortage. James Orman and Richard Kingcote also took opportunities as pinch-hitters and will start next season on the full-time roster. 

Three jockeys were hospitalised and a horse died. The widespread negative publicity in Hong Kong’s non-racing media was a wake-up call. That ‘news’ coverage was a sign that times have changed, even in Hong Kong, and a sharper public relations response will be required from the club in the future. 

Who Do You Think Would Want To Start Again And Redo The 2024-25 Campaign?

Michael Cox: There’s no way to turn back time for Jamie Richards but the young Kiwi trainer will press ‘hard reset’ on his Hong Kong career next season. 

Richards will shift stables from the ‘Olympic Stables’ end, where four of Hong Kong’s trainers are based, to the older facilities at the Tai Po end of Sha Tin Racecourse. 

He will also have a new assistant trainer, Ben So replacing Jones Ma, after a season marked by a slew of stable transfers and being the centre of rampant rumour mongering in the local Chinese media. 

The rumors that Richards planned to leave Hong Kong started on the anonymously driven YouTube channels that pedal ‘insider’ gossip and conspiracy theories. The rumours weren’t true, but they contributed to the exodus of talent from Richards’ yard. 

The only thing worse than a stable transfer walking out the door is when the stable transfer starts winning for the new trainer and that has happened to Richards on a few notable occasions this season. 

That would have stung Richards’ professional pride but perhaps it will provide motivation for his fourth season. Trainers have come back from worse situations and Richards still has 44 horses on his books, including eight that are either unraced or yet to start in Hong Kong. As long as Richards can look at what he still has with a glass half full perspective, he can bounce back. 

David Morgan: Danny Shum deserves respect for firstly having the guts to take Romantic Warrior offshore for four months and secondly for getting his horse to the races in form for each of his three starts. But you can’t help thinking he’d love a rerun of those races. After all, a neck was all that cost Romantic Warrior the US$20 million Saudi Cup win, and then there was that oh, so slim verdict in the Dubai Turf. It’s hard to believe that if those two races were run again the outcomes would be the same.

Leap back in time, go again, and barrier draws might have been different, James McDonald might have found a different race shaping around him, he may have held on to Romantic Warrior for just a stride or two longer before surging to the lead in the Saudi Cup; and then any number of things could have happened just a fraction differently in the Dubai Turf to make up the narrow difference. Shum could then be sitting with three wins from three and a lucrative, legendary offshore hat-trick on his record. 

Before the Saudi Cup run, Shum was also flying high in the Hong Kong premiership. He led the table by one win heading to the season’s halfway point and looked set fair as a champion trainer contender. But with the season drawing to a close, he is barely hanging on to 10th position after a run of results that has brought only 11 wins from 249 runners since February 9, compared to 29 wins from 251 starters in the five months prior to that.

Jack Dawling: It was always going to be nigh on impossible for Pierre Ng to replicate his mammoth effort and agonisingly close second-place finish in the 2023-24 season’s trainers’ championship. But, even with that in mind, he would probably like to turn back time and start the 2024-25 campaign over again.

Ng, who was at the top of the table for the majority of 2023-24 before he was reeled in by Francis Lui on the final day of the campaign, started this term with a similar bang.

He had two promising horses with top-level aspirations in Mugen and Galaxy Patch at his disposal, claimed an early Group 3 with Beauty Waves in October and found himself top of the tree by Christmas with 25 wins.

Fast-forward nearly seven months and Ng has only had 14 wins from 359 runners since Boxing Day, failed to register a win in 2025 with Galaxy Patch or Mugen, and lost Beauty Waves to Tony Cruz via a stable transfer.

Which Of The Season’s Breakout Stars Impressed You Most?

David Morgan: Ka Ying Rising went into the opening race meeting at Sha Tin last September with big anticipation around him off the back of four straight wins, but even so, what he has done since exceeds all sensible expectations. That first-up win, defying a 135lb burden, was a brilliant start, but things just kept getting better. His eight unanswered wins include that stunning track record in the G2 Jockey Club Sprint, a first Group 1 in the Hong Kong Sprint, then another track record in the G1 Centenary Sprint Cup, and he has kept delivering.

His last start victory in the G1 Chairman’s Sprint Prize confirmed the notion that he is the world’s best sprinter right now: he travelled easily and quickened sharply before easing to the winning post, well clear of Japan’s top sprinter Satono Reve, who proved his merit next time when a close second at Royal Ascot. From exciting prospect to global star in eight months, everything Ka Ying Rising did was impressive.

Jack Dawling: Everything David Eustace touched has seemingly turned to gold this season and it looks like his team for next season is only getting stronger. His 36 wins so far this campaign may only put him 14th in the trainers’ championship, but his strike rate of over 10 percent is firmly in the top five of the 22 handlers on the roster for the 2024-25 campaign. 

Plus, he seems to be striking a good balance when it comes to how he is sourcing his stable. A combination of exciting PPGs like Dazzling Fit, proven high-class stable transfers like Massive Sovereign and Victor The Winner, and up-and-coming imports like Glittering Legend stand him in good stead after a very solid first season in the city.

Michael Cox: It’s easy to get carried away with an apprentice’s performances as they surge through their 20 wins with a ten pound allowance and go on through the next 25 at seven pounds, but that is when things can hit a wall. Ellis Wong has quickly found his feet with five pounds though and is riding with the kind of confidence that can carry him to a long and successful career. 

Wong has the right people in his ear – would there be a more fun trainer to serve an apprenticeship under than Caspar Fownes? – and is getting support from trainers that can not only provide winners, but guidance too. 

At the time of publishing, the 24-year-old had ridden 12 winners from his last 60 rides and will hit next season with some serious momentum. 

Andrew Hawkins: Next season’s Hong Kong Derby crop is already looking pretty solid and that’s without the batch of imports we can expect to see stepping out fresh in the back end of this calendar year. Of the bunch we’ve already seen in action in Hong Kong, Sky Jewellery is the one that has most caught the eye. 

The John Size-trained gelding recorded three impressive wins from 1200m to a mile at both courses and is one of a rare group of horses to win a 1200m Class 4 on debut at Happy Valley. He also would have learnt a lot in defeat when he was twice beaten against older and more experienced rivals, the first time conceding weight all-round and the second time when he split the prolific winner Hong Lok Golf and one-time Classic series contender Sky Trust. 

Sky Jewellery has been at Conghua since his last win in April, and with a pedigree that suggests he should relish 2000m, he is a deserved early Derby favourite heading into the off-season.

Let’s State Cases For Three Different Outcomes For The Horse Of The Year Title… Jack, You First, And The ‘Favourite’ Ka Ying Rising

Jack Dawling: Voyage Bubble made history and Romantic Warrior went above and beyond on his Middle Eastern mission, but when you look at the class that is required to remain unbeaten in a campaign – let alone never look like being beaten for one moment in Hong Kong’s strong sprint division – to my mind, the judging panel cannot look past David Hayes’ stable star.

Eight wins, four Group 1s, two track records and over 16 cumulative lengths means Ka Ying Rising’s season can be described in one word: perfect. He wasn’t beaten by Red Lion like Voyage Bubble, nor did he find Soul Rush too tough to beat like Romantic Warrior, he simply turned up and dominated on the Sha Tin turf for over seven months without once looking vulnerable.

He started the campaign as a potential superstar but has ended it as a horse capable of being a true champion for another two seasons. What’s more, there’s the possibility he could end the year as the highest-rated horse in the world. It would be a strange look if he took home the world’s best racehorse prize for 2025 but not the Horse of the Year award in Hong Kong.

David Morgan: It’s remarkable that Voyage Bubble is the first Triple Crown winner Hong Kong has seen in 31 years and only the second ever, yet he is by no means guaranteed the Horse of the Year title. That’s the measure of the competition this season. Voyage Bubble’s campaign was fantastic, though, and his achievements deserve to be emphasised: five wins and two seconds from seven starts and a G1 Hong Kong Mile winner, no less, defeating Romantic Warrior’s Dubai conqueror Soul Rush. 

And let’s look at that Triple Crown: he bossed his Hong Kong peers at a mile, a mile and a quarter, and a mile and a half. That last leg, at the longest distance in the Hong Kong programme, came just a month after he failed by a lessening short-head to win the G1 Champions Mile. River Verdon’s Triple Crown, it should be noted, only required him to stretch as far as 2200m. That being so, Voyage Bubble achieved what no other horse had done before and his consistency and versatility across distances deserve reward.   

Andrew Hawkins: Not since Indigenous ran second to Special Week in the 1999 Japan Cup – with High-Rise, Montjeu, Borgia, Tiger Hill and Stay Gold among those in behind – has there been a more significant beaten effort by a Hong Kong horse on the world stage than Romantic Warrior’s second to Forever Young in the Saudi Cup. Given it was his first start on dirt in the world’s richest race and there was such a margin to an established Group 1 winner in Ushba Tesoro in third, it was arguably Romantic Warrior’s best ever performance. Had he won the Saudi Cup and the Dubai Turf, we would be talking about a runaway favourite for Horse of the Year – is there really such a difference between success and the narrowest of defeats?

Michael… Any Other Options?

Michael Cox: Like many, I had my mind made up that Ka Ying Rising should be 2024-25 Horse of the Year, based on his ‘perfect eight’ campaign, before Voyage Bubble’s shot at an historic Triple Crown. 

Call it recency bias or just getting caught up in the moment, but there was something about being on-course for Voyage Bubble’s Triple Crown-clinching victory in the Group 1 Standard Chartered Champions  & Chater Cup that felt monumental. 

The Horse of the Year award isn’t always ‘fair’ in the sense that Voyage Bubble’s season would be enough to win in many seasons. 

Here’s one way to look at it, just for the sake of argument. What will happen sooner: A horse wins eight-from-eight in the manner of Ka Ying Rising, who had beat up on mostly the same horses all season, or another Triple Crown champion? 

Sharing the award would be a fair result and might just happen given there are only six members on the voting panel. ∎

Michael Cox

2001: A Size Odyssey, And The Season That Changed Hong Kong

David Morgan

Purton’s Season Ebbed And Flowed; Ka Ying Rising Thrilled

Warrior Vanquished

Yahagi Lauds Forever Young After Epic Saudi Cup Triumph

Future Idols

Rare Air: Sky’s The Limit For Size’s Jewellery

Globetrotter

Shum’s Romantic Warrior Teamwork Cementing Legacy