When Invincible Ibis stormed to his fourth consecutive victory at Sha Tin, there was one voice chanting a name that cut cleanly through the roar of the crowd.
“Bak Lou Gam Gong!” – the Cantonese name for Invincible Ibis (白鷺金剛)
The Cantonese was pitch-perfect. The volume, unmistakable.
It surprised a few around him that the voice belonged to an expat – albeit a Hongkonger born and raised – Daniel Zigal, losing himself in a moment that decades in racing had taught him never to take for granted. Money can buy ownership but it can’t buy that feeling.
After a lifetime in the sport, Zigal finally may have what every owner chases and almost none ever truly find: a genuinely special horse.
“Probably,” he says, when asked if Invincible Ibis is the best he’s had. Then he pauses. “Yes, definitely.”
The pause matters. Because Zigal knows exactly how rare this is.
Four wins in a row in Hong Kong is no small thing. Three, he says, is already “very, very difficult.” Four? “Beyond my dreams.” And now Invincible Ibis finds himself in the Classic Series, a leading hope for both the Hong Kong Classic Mile and, if he proves his worth there, the 2026 BMW Hong Kong Derby – the race for four-year-olds billed as “once in a lifetime”.
“For me,” Zigal says, “it really is.”
Zigal has been a Hong Kong Jockey Club member for more than 40 years, is still a voting member, and for 25 of those years served as an honorary raceday judge and honorary steward – roles he took seriously, with a sense of duty shaped by family history as much as privilege. In his high-rise Aberdeen office sits a framed collection of HKJC membership badges dating back to 1950, long before his own name was attached to a permit.
Shortly before that, his Russian-Jewish parents fled Shanghai and settled in Hong Kong, joining an amateur racing scene that, at the time, was heavily influenced by Russian trainers who had also come via Shanghai. Horses were part of family life almost from the beginning.
Zigal’s earliest racing memory is from around the age of six, playing football on the Happy Valley infield while horses thundered past. Every Sunday meant stable visits. Swimming pools and playgrounds could wait. The horses couldn’t.
He raced horses alongside his mother, Irene, inheriting not just ownership but continuity – Prince Igor, Prince Baikal, Bolshoi Prince – names that echo another era. Some were handy. Some heartbreakingly unlucky. One never even made the track, breaking his legs in the stable in Zigal’s first bitter lesson about how cruel the sport can be.
Which is why Invincible Ibis feels different.
“Getting a really great horse is incredibly hard,” Zigal says. “You see people spending lots of money on horses that never even see a racetrack. And then sometimes the champions – Golden Sixty, Ambitious Dragon – weren’t that expensive.”
Invincible Ibis was bought as a two-year-old at the 2024 Karaka Ready to Run sale for NZD$425,000, insured and shipped north. A serious investment, but hardly extravagant by Hong Kong standards. What followed, though, has been priceless.
“What do I love about racing?” Zigal says, then laughs. “I don’t want to be rude, but, put it this way, having an orgasm is fantastic. This is better.”
It’s not about money, he insists. It’s about watching a horse from youth to maturity, seeing potential turn into performance. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat – and knowing how rarely the former truly arrives.
Guiding Invincible Ibis is Mark Newnham, currently leading the Hong Kong trainers’ championship. Zigal has had many trainers over the years, but none, he says, like this. “Mark has taken it to another level,” Zigal says. “Weekly video updates, reports, explanations – everything.”
That emphasis on communication wasn’t always fashionable in Hong Kong. Zigal learned that years ago through an accidental encounter with one of the sport’s giants.
He remembers sitting down at a dinner beside a man who introduced himself simply as “a trainer”. Zigal didn’t realise at first that it was Ivan Allan – new to the city. Allan asked who trained Zigal’s horses.
“Wong Tang-Ping,” Zigal said.
Why him?
“Because he keeps me informed,” Zigal replied. “He tells me how the horse is eating, how it’s feeling – the temperature of the horse.”
Allan looked at him and didn’t hesitate – “You’re the worst kind of owner a trainer could have,” he said. “You want too much information.”
That was Ivan Allan, and that was the old school.
Newnham, Zigal says, represents something else entirely. Information isn’t a nuisance – it’s part of the ownership experience. Understanding the horse, the preparation, the thinking behind decisions.
“For owners,” Zigal says, “that makes all the difference.”
That openness, Zigal believes, is changing ownership culture in Hong Kong.
So too is the renewed importance of syndicates – something Zigal has lived firsthand. The Ibis Syndicate was close to folding before he and a small group of Hong Kong Jockey Club heavy hitters stepped in to save it. Interest had waned. Disillusionment had crept in. They rebuilt it slowly, deliberately, with “lifers” – people who loved the sport, not just returns.
Today, the syndicate includes a host of voting members, including judge Joseph Fok, the syndicate manager Tony Souza, prominent owners Charmaine Li and Robert Ng, and Zigal’s son, Danny – another link in a chain stretching back generations.
“Being in a syndicate,” Zigal says, “you get 100 per cent of the thrill and ten or five per cent of the cost. And you feel it just as deeply.”
What would it mean to win a Derby?
He smiles. “Heart-attack time,” he says.
And if that moment comes, you’ll hear him again. Clear, loud and unmissable over the din of Derby day roar.
“白鷺金剛!”
Remember the name.
Bak Lou Gam Gong. ∎
