Every horse in Hong Kong has to trial before it races. At this time of year, with horses returning from a break and others about to have their first start, barrier trials are normally the best form guide we have.
But I saw the confusion from some overseas racing fans when Ka Ying Rising’s trials were posted before the season opener. There is huge international interest in him now, and plenty of those watching had no idea what the trial meant.
It is easy to forget, as a Kiwi living in Australia who has ridden in and followed Hong Kong racing for 40 years, that most major racing countries do not have barrier trials. England, France, Japan and America do not run them at all.
A trial is not a race. There is no prize money and nobody has to win. Every horse is out there for a different reason.
There are three main ones: fitness, education, and remedial work ordered by the stewards to fix a bad habit like missing the start.
A trial is usually run slower than a race and there is less pressure. In a race, every horse has to be tested. In a trial, a horse doesn’t have to be tested. A trainer can build fitness without over-taxing a horse.
Every trainer has different tendencies with trials. Danny Shum likes to bring them on and will ask for a bit, and Tony Cruz is the same. Brett Crawford comes from South Africa, where they have far less barrier trials, and he does not trial his horses as often, and sometimes not at all. It is interesting, because it works for him.
Jamie Richards is interesting this season – most of his horses have trialled twice before going to the races, whereas other trainers have just trialled their horses once.
And then there is John Size.
Thirteen championships from 25 seasons, and nobody uses trials the way he does. Size will give a horse six, eight, even nine trials before it races. It is rare to see one of his debutants with fewer than three.
He does not gallop them hard in trackwork, either. He brings their fitness along gradually, through a lot of quiet trials, and that shapes the horse’s attitude. Size is all about the mental side of a horse. The prime objective of a John Size trial is to give the horse a good experience and for it to be happy.
You see the payoff on race day. In the parade ring and behind the barriers you will see horses sweating and playing up, spending energy before the race. It is rare to see a Size horse do that. They have had the grounding at the trials with plenty of practice, and they save their energy and maximum effort for the race.
The catch is that it makes his horses very hard to read in a trial. They are not asked to do much, so there is little to see. I can tell how one is travelling even when he is 10 lengths off them, but that is a gift I have, and it is near impossible to teach. It comes from watching closely, again and again, and from having ridden horses my entire life. I was riding in a lot of those trials when John first arrived, and the way he did things was so different that nobody could work his horses out based on their trials. They were winning first-up at big odds.
Twenty-five years on, it is still hard. Spicy Standard won first-up on opening day after what looked like a terrible trial. Prime Ace ran third at 19-to-one on Sunday off four trials that didn’t tell you much.
Watch the trials anyway. It is at this time of year when trials can find you winners.
More On Trials: The Things That Catch People Out
Wet Dirt Is The Great Deceiver
The biggest thing about trials in Hong Kong is the surface. If the all-weather track surface is wet, a lot of horses simply do not go on it, and the field gets strung out. The kickback comes back into their eyes and their face and horses can ease up. A horse can stop on wet dirt far quicker than on a dry surface.
That is exactly what happened with the two Size horses I mentioned.
Spicy Standard stopped badly over the last 150 metres of his dirt trial, 11 days before the season opener. He was beaten more than 11 lengths and the Jockey Club comment read: “Up with the pace; weakened in the Straight.” He won first-up.
Prime Ace had four trials leading into Sunday. He was beaten 11 lengths, then 19, then 6.5, and then he ran last, beaten 36 lengths, in his final hit-out a little over two weeks out. He ran third on Sunday at 19-to-one.
The common denominator in both of those final trials was a dirt track rated ‘wet slow’. Looks can be deceiving. Horses drop out sharply on that surface and it can mean nothing at all. Again: a barrier trial is not a race.
Nobody Carries Weight
There are no allocated weights in a trial, and that is easy to forget when you are comparing two horses in the same hit-out. The apprentices riding in Hong Kong at the moment – Britney Wong and Nichola Yuen – are very light. There can be twenty pounds between one of them and a heavyweight rider like Hugh Bowman – he could weigh as much as 130 pounds in a trial. A twenty pound difference is a lot. Come race day, the weights are allocated and that needs to be taken into account.
Follow The Jockey, Not Just The Horse
This one is important. There might be a race coming up in a fortnight and a jockey has ridden three different horses in the trials leading into it. Watch which one he takes. Normally he is picking the one he believes trialled the best.
Some riders will test a horse in a trial purely to get a feel for how well it is going, because they have a choice to make. That is why following a jockey early in the season is worth your time, especially a rider like Zac Purton, who has more choices than anybody.
Take Note Of The Time – And How It Was Run
Do not just watch the horses – take note of the times, and then ask yourself how easily the horse did it. A fast time from a horse that was hard ridden is not the same as a slightly slower time from a horse that wasn’t asked for as much. How much a horse is pushed out, and how it is travelling while it is being pushed, will tell you more than the actual time on its own.
And A Note On New Zealand Trials
People in Hong Kong will sometimes look at New Zealand trials for clues, especially if a horse has been bought out of one. Understand that they are a different thing again. So many horses are sold out of New Zealand trials to Hong Kong, and these days even more to Australia. That means the horses are tested far more over there. They are being shown off to maximise a sale. A New Zealand trial is often a sales pitch. A Hong Kong trial is not.
The Size Influence Travelled Further Than Hong Kong
What people outside Hong Kong might not realise is how far this method has gone. Look at Chris Waller.
Waller had his first Australian winner at Wyong in 1998, and he set up at Rosehill with four horses not long before Size left Sydney for Hong Kong. He has said since that Size was an influence on him, and you do not have to look very hard to see it.
Watch a Waller trial. It is the same idea: bring the horse along slowly, don’t put too much pressure on them and keep every experience a good one. Let the racecourse be the place where he finally gets asked a question.
And the proof is not just in the method, it is in the results. Waller’s horses are consistent – in their preparation and then in their performance – and that is not luck. They are calm. They know their job. He has put a steady foundation underneath them and he has looked after the horse’s mental attitude as much as its fitness, and the good horses he has seem to last for years.
That is what Size worked out at Sha Tin, and it is exactly why his trials look so unhelpful to the rest of us. They are not there to tell you anything. They are there to make the horse happy so he will perform better on race day.
Sheza Alibi, And A Question Worth Asking
Sheza Alibi was awesome in the Makybe Diva Stakes. She is close to unbeatable second-up. First-up she has had four goes and won once. Second-up she has won four from four, and she goes to another level.
Autumn Glow beat her fair and square first-up in the Winx Stakes, and Autumn Glow is a superstar in her own right. But if they met again next start, I do not think there would be a big gap between them.
Which brings me to something I would like somebody to explain. Why does every superstar that comes along in Australian racing seem to be a filly or a mare?
Go through the best horses of this century: Black Caviar, Makybe Diva, Winx. All mares. Now look at the two best horses in the sport right now, Autumn Glow and Sheza Alibi. Both mares.
I have written about this before but there has to be a reason. I have my own theories and I am sure you have yours, so I will leave the question open – but part of it must be that the good colts go to stud early and the best geldings used to get sold offshore. But even that is changing. Fewer top Australian geldings go to Hong Kong now, because the good ones cost more than buyers there are willing to pay now. Another factor is that anabolic steroid use stopped in the 1990s and that put geldings at a disadvantage.
Here is the other question. Should the weight-for-age scale be looked at again for these big races? As it stands, Sheza Alibi got two kilograms off the older male horses on Saturday for being a mare. She was utterly dominant. She could have given them weight and still won. So why, in an era when mares seem to be superior do they still get an advantage? ∎
