It’s getting cold in Sweden, even down south at Jägersro racecourse in Malmo where two-time champion trainer Fredrik Reuterskiold is waiting on word from the Hong Kong Jockey Club about whether Lamborghini BF will be boarding a plane for the mountainous task of facing Ka Ying Rising in the G1 Hong Kong Sprint.
Lamborghini BF is Sweden’s top sprinter, unbeaten at home this year, and not out of his depth in forays to England and Germany in recent months either. But as well as vaccinations and a 14-day pre-entry quarantine to consider, Reuterskiold is in a race to beat the approaching cold: with the temperature in single digits and threatening to drop at any time, he needs the go-ahead soon if he is to enact an audacious plan.
“I need an answer pretty soon because it’s starting to get cold up here and we need to know something before we do something else, because we close our track from the middle of November until the beginning of April,” Reuterskiold told Idol Horse.
“Now it’s still on the plus side, it’s not minus degrees yet, but it can drop very quickly when it starts to get cold and then the tracks will freeze and you can’t do anything. But I can still keep them going while it’s five degrees now.”
It was Ka Ying Rising’s imperious presence that prompted the trainer to even think about trying to get Lamborghini BF into one of the world’s toughest sprint races, which received only 21 entries at the initial stage. That and Sha Tin’s flat, turning configuration.
“I thought, when I put the entry in, nobody wants to go over there to meet Ka Ying Rising, there won’t be as many entries,” he said. “I put an entry because I believe he’s a better horse in a sprint race with a turn.
“He’s not as good as Ka Ying Rising, of course, but he’s rated 107 and I think he’s a bit better on a round course than a straight course. I haven’t heard anything from them yet, and obviously they invite horses that they think are good enough, but we’ll see what they say, they should come back to me this week with some news.”
If the Hong Kong invitation doesn’t arrive, Lamborghini BF looks likely to return to Dubai at some stage this winter after an unfortunate time there last winter, which saw him race only once, for seventh in the G3 Mahab Al Shimaal.
“If I don’t get into this race, I think I’ll put them on the plane to Dubai again,” Reuterskiold said. “He had some bad luck there last year, he had a minor hoof problem and you can’t afford that to happen, so I think he has some unfinished business out there.”
And the trainer is already eyeing another Hong Kong contest beyond that, the G1 Chairman’s Sprint Prize in late April.
“If we cannot go there now, there’s another invitation race in the spring, in April,” he said. “My thought was if we could train in Dubai all winter, maybe he could go from there to Hong Kong in April.”
Reuterskiold is not shy of a challenge. He gave up training for three years to become the CEO of the Swedish horse racing authority at a crucial juncture.
“We had for many years a monopoly on our betting system here, on our horses, and that monopoly was about to end so they wanted someone from the sport who could take care of the sport to transfer the racing over from this monopoly to the open market,” he said.
“I was there for three years for the Swedish horse racing authority and I liked it a lot. It was nice to stop as a trainer all of a sudden and do something else, but still be in the game. That was a very interesting few years.”
Since returning to training he has scaled back but still enjoys a partnership with owner Berno Fonzander, a former Malmo car dealer who spends the winters in Spain.
“I only train more or less my own horses, I own all my horses together with one man (Fonzander), I found him many many years ago and at the most he had 16 horses with me and we own all of the horses together,” he said.
“It’s a little bit lower-scale now after I came back after the CEO time and we only have five horses left now. A while ago he said to me ‘Why don’t we name them after car brands?’ So the B is his name, Berno, and F is my name, Fredrik, so that’s where the BF comes from.”
Lamborghini BF followed a good albeit hampered sixth in the G2 King George Stakes at Goodwood in July with a solid third in a soft-going Baden-Baden Group 3 in August before nailing his latest domestic win, the Bro Park Sprint Championship, under regular pilot Elione Chaves.
“He’s not far away from those good sprinters, but it’s a mountain to climb to be even close to a horse like Ka Ying Rising,” Reuterskiold said. “But the horse is in good shape anyway.”
“But, like I said, I need to know very soon so we can have a couple of barrier trials for him to get him up to race shape.” ∎
