Hong Kong Classic Mile winner Little Paradise is set to leave Jimmy Ting’s stable only days after beginning his five-year-old campaign in Sunday’s G3 Celebration Cup.
Owner Ko Kam Piu has confirmed publicly that Little Paradise will be given a change of environment, and Idol Horse understands the 109-rated gelding is expected to join Danny Shum in the coming days. The move will bring an end to an association with Ting that produced seven wins from 14 Hong Kong starts and more than HK$16.3 million in prize money.
Ko and Shum have enjoyed success together before, most notably with Little Bridge, who won the G1 King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 2012 under Zac Purton.
Five of Little Paradise’s seven wins came last season, headed by the Hong Kong Classic Mile in February and the G3 Premier Cup over 1400 metres in June, which gave Ting his first Group-race success.
Little Paradise returned in Sunday’s Celebration Cup as the $1.90 favourite under Purton and finished sixth, beaten a length and a half behind Hong Kong Derby winner Invincible Ibis.
After the race, Purton told Idol Horse: “It was a messy-run race. Everyone was in a rush out of the gates to try and be there, and then once we got into our positions, Keith slammed on the brakes on a horse that’s a free-rolling horse. So it was a bit of a strange move.
“Then, after having the anchor out, he decided to let it rip 550 from home. There was just no rhythm to the race. It was stop-start.”
Little Paradise had been headed towards the G3 Sha Tin Trophy on October 19, although that plan may now depend on his new trainer. Purton had already elected to ride elsewhere, committing on Monday to Mark Newnham’s My Wish after partnering the FWD Champions Mile winner in two barrier trials since Hugh Bowman was sidelined by a hip injury.
Idol Horse columnist Shane Dye believes the problem lies in the gelding’s racing manners. In this week’s Idol Thoughts column, the Hall of Famer wrote that Little Paradise “still doesn’t know how to race properly”, lacking natural gate speed and at times missing the start.
“When he is pushed to be closer to the lead, the horse over-races,” Dye wrote. “He gets the signal from the rider to go fast, but he doesn’t know how to settle back into a rhythm and relax once he has found a position.”
Dye said that if he were riding Little Paradise, he would tell connections he would ride the horse “where he wants to be, whether that’s third or 11th.”
He also pointed to the head-to-head record with Invincible Ibis, which now stands 4-1 in the Derby winner’s favour. Little Paradise’s only win over his rival came in the Classic Mile, the one time he started the longer price of the two, and he has been shorter in the market at every meeting since.
Little Paradise is the latest in a long line of Hong Kong stars to change stables at the height of their careers, and the third high-profile transfer out of a stable this year. In April, Pierre Ng lost his two highest-rated horses inside four days. Sagacious Life joined Caspar Fownes, and Galaxy Patch went to Brett Crawford. Galaxy Patch has finished second in both his starts for the new yard, including an encouraging run in last Sunday’s Celebration Cup.
The most famous transfer of all involved Good Ba Ba. In August 2009, owner John Yuen Se-kit moved Hong Kong’s highest-rated horse from Andreas Schutz to Derek Cruz on the advice of a feng shui master, while Schutz was on holiday in Europe. Good Ba Ba won an unprecedented third straight Hong Kong Mile for Cruz that December. It was the last win of his career. He later moved again, to Michael Chang, and won only one of his final 17 starts, the last four of them unplaced in Australia for Rick Hore-Lacy as an 11-year-old.
Military Attack, a former Horse of the Year, left John Moore for Caspar Fownes before the 2014-15 season and won the Sha Tin Trophy at his first start for the stable. Mr Stunning won the 2017 Hong Kong Sprint for John Size and the 2018 edition for Frankie Lor, giving Size’s former assistant his first Group 1. In February 2019, owner Kerm Din moved Pakistan Star, the dual Group 1 winner and the public’s favourite horse, from Tony Cruz to Paul O’Sullivan after a winless start to his season that included a recurrence of the horse’s propensity to stop mid-race and mid-barrier trial. ∎
