“No idea,” Brenton Avdulla said to the reporter.
The Australian rider had just exited the Sha Tin jockeys’ room after racing on Sunday when he gave that reply in response to being asked which horse he would be riding in the Hong Kong Classic Mile on February 1.
“We’re all waiting,” Avdulla continued. “The rest of us are like planes circling Hong Kong Airport waiting for air traffic control to tell us we can land.”
The holding pattern Avdulla was referencing speaks to the singular dominance Zac Purton has within Hong Kong racing. Hong Kong’s champion jockey had options to ride no less than seven horses in the upcoming Classic Mile, with all roads – and most decisions – leading to the Hong Kong Derby in mid-March.
Later that evening Purton sent a voice message to trainer Mark Newnham explaining that he would have to decline the ride on Invincible Ibis. Purton had won on the gelding three times this season and still had first dibs even though he had ridden Beauty Bolt to second behind Newham’s contender earlier that day in a key ‘trial’ race restricted to four-year-olds.
“Zac sent me a voice message that said he was going to ride something else and I have booked Hugh (Bowman) for the Four-Year-Old Classic Series,” Newnham told Idol Horse.
Bowman had ‘filled-in’ for Purton aboard Invincible Ibis that afternoon. When asked why Newnham booked Bowman for the entire three-race series, he replied: “Consistency – I don’t like chopping and changing. That is why you see me sticking with jockeys regularly. I get better results with that, that is what works for me. I spoke to Hugh, he was happy to make a commitment and so was I, and that was it.”
Purton has chosen Sagacious Life. But at this stage it’s a one-race commitment. How the Brazilian import performs in the Classic Mile will determine whether Purton stays in the saddle through the Classic Cup and the Derby.
“It’s hard because they are all nice horses,” Purton told Idol Horse. “They are all progressive and they have all done everything right and they are all owned by great owners that have supported me, and they are trained by trainers that have supported me as well – it’s really hard – so at the end of the day I have to pick which one I think is the best one.”
Purton’s options included Little Paradise, a horse he had ridden earlier on Sunday to another win that was packed with potential. Not only that, the horse is owned by his long-time supporter Ko Kam Piu, in whose colours Purton won the G1 King’s Stand Stakes on Little Bridge at Royal Ascot in 2012. But then there’s also Beauty Bolt, owned by the Kwok family for whom he has long been the go-to rider and who handed him the reins on the great champion Beauty Generation.
“(Little Paradise) is a tough call to make,” he said. “So is the call on Beauty Bolt and the Kwok family – I rode Beauty Generation for them, the first horse in Hong Kong racing to win $100 million in prizemoney, first horse to win eight races in a season. There is a deep history there as well, so it’s not easy.”
Knowing Purton was a possibility to hit ‘eject’ from Little Paradise after Sunday’s win, trainer Jimmy Ting had already lined up Vincent Ho as a contingency. Once Purton made known his choice to ride Sagacious Life, Ting and Ko sought confirmation from Ho that he would be their man through the series.
“Jimmy has asked me to commit to all three races, so I had a think last night and this morning and I decided to say yes to that,” Ho told Idol Horse on Monday.
“If it’s not a Golden Sixty or a Romantic Warrior situation, it’s normal to not commit to all three legs, but I believe Little Paradise at least has a great opportunity in the Classic Mile and then we’ll find out if he can handle 1800 metres in the Classic Cup. If he can, we’ll have to discuss if they want to keep going to the Derby. It’s too early to say if he’ll handle the 2000 metres.”
The unknown factors are what makes the decision Purton has made one part educated judgement and one part a roll of the dice when it comes to Hong Kong Derby considerations.
“It’s a unique year,” he said. “There have been other years where two to three months out I have had six or seven horses, but as you get closer to the race, some might improve, some might go amiss and some don’t make it to the race and that then makes it a straightforward decision.
“But then there are other years where I don’t have a horse at all, like two years ago when I rode Massive Sovereign in the Derby, I didn’t have a ride until two weeks before when he won.”
The game is all about winning, of course, but if relationships can be managed skilfully and preserved through difficult decisions, the more success you’ll get. Purton is a master at establishing and nurturing those relationships, though as he emphasised, it is not easy to achieve nor are the decisions easy to execute. But he believes he has fulfilled what he set out to do for each of the Classic Series hopefuls he has ridden so far.
“My job was to try and get the best out of every horse and to try and qualify every horse for those owners for the race,” he said, “so leading up there is a lot of pressure on me to get the horses there. I feel like to some degree I did my job and played my part and it’s great they gave me that chance – we needed to get their ratings up to get into the race.”
Sagacious Life – a Group 1 winner in Brazil over 2400 metres – is currently top-rated among the four-year-old Classic Series candidates on a mark of 97; Little Paradise is rated 95 and Invincible Ibis 91.
“At the end of the day, I have to pick which one I think is the best one,” Purton said. “I just felt firstly Sagacious Life has the highest rating, so when you are coming into a set-weights race that always has to be taken into consideration, and the fact that he carried top-weight in a Class 2 race over a mile and won I thought was an impressive effort.
“He is only a little horse at around 1,050 pounds, so for him to carry that weight and get the job done was full of merit, but at the end of the day you can make a case for all of them.”
As for Little Paradise, Purton noted the gelding “has done nothing wrong and has been terrific” while he sees Invincible Ibis as “a little bit untapped in the sense that mentally he is not there yet but he is getting the job done,” and he says that makes Newnham’s galloper “hard to gauge” in terms of where his level is at.
Purton also sees Beauty Bolt being “as honest as they come” while Top Dragon “was unlucky the other day and ran really well.” Public Attention put up “an excellent effort” second-up when caught wide, while the yet to step out Glittering Legend is more a Derby horse and Fortune Boy “wasn’t high on the list.”
Meanwhile, Newnham believes the case for Invincible Ibis going through the series to the Hong Kong Derby was strengthened on Sunday.
“I am looking at all three races and I think yesterday was a good pointer given that it was a strongly run race, giving weight with such a strong finish, so that gives you hope that 2000 (metres) is within his grasp against his own age group,” he said. “I am more confident at 2000 metres now than I was before the race.”
But Purton has made the decision he hopes will bring him a first Classic Mile win and perhaps a third Derby success, and that means his rival jockeys have been able stop circling and land rides that might just benefit them if the champion has chosen the wrong one.
“I had seven horses to choose from, but I can only pick one so the odds are against me, it’s six versus one,” Purton added. “If any one of the other horses wins, people will say I have made the wrong choice.” ∎
