Bouncing Back: Andrea Atzeni Has Cracked The Hong Kong Code
Italian jockey Andrea Atzeni has re-established himself as a top five rider in Hong Kong following a tough initiation.
ANDREA ATZENI isn’t the first young jockey to leave Hong Kong humbled by the experience and he won’t be the last, but the difference is that he has returned to establish himself as a serious force.
Atzeni was 23 when he rode just three winners from 79 rides in Hong Kong at the start of the 2014-15 season. Struggling for opportunities and out of favour with trainers, he cut his stint short after just six weeks to return to home to a lucrative retainer with Sheikh Fahad Al Thani’s Qatar Racing for the start of 2015.
The list of world class riders with similar statistics during a stint in Hong Kong as a young jockey contains some illustrious names.
Last week’s Longines International Jockeys’ Championship winner Mickael Barzalona won a lone, lowly Class Four handicap on the all-weather track out of a total of 42 rides in 2011/12. Now 33, he has taken his career wins tally to more than 2,000, was champion rider in his native France in 2021 and has won more than 40 Group 1s.
Australian Damian Lane had ridden 500 winners before his 21st birthday, but when he arrived at Sha Tin late in the 2014/15 season he struggled to keep pace. Lane had just five winners from 151 rides in Hong Kong, but at age 30, he has blossomed into a star that has 35 career Group 1s and has won feature races on Japanese horses in five different countries.
Even last week’s Hong Kong Vase-winning rider Oisin Murphy failed as a 21-year-old in the highly competitive jurisdiction: he was highly touted upon arrival at Sha Tin but rode just four winners from 130 starts. The Irishman has since been British champion four times.
Similarly, Atzeni has spring-boarded from his tough initiation – he has now ridden more than 1200 career winners and counting – but perhaps his most impressive feat yet, and one that sets him apart from the aforementioned trio of stars, is the way he has returned and rebranded himself as a full-time rider in Hong Kong.
Asked what he knows now about breaking into the Hong Kong scene that he didn’t know as a young man, Atzeni was straight to the point: “You need to work hard for it.”
“When I came here the first time I just didn’t work hard enough,” Atzeni said, referring mostly to his off-track application. “I wasn’t grafting the way you need to, I wasn’t chasing rides. We don’t have agents here and you need to do it yourself.”
Atzeni was speaking immediately after another impressive outing on Wednesday night: a double at Happy Valley, a track he rides particularly well (ten wins at 15%), has him placed equal fifth in the jockeys’ championship after a fourth-placed finish last season.
It isn’t just Atzeni’s mindset that has been transformed since that first stint, he has also reshaped himself physically: he cut his weight with a combination of diet and exercise ahead of his return to Hong Kong for the start of last season.
“I knew how tough it is here so I was trying to gain as much advantage as I could and if you can ride that bottom weight it’s a big advantage,” he said. “I was riding at higher weights in Britain anyway, so it wasn’t that difficult.”
The Italian has proven he can ride the minimum of 115 pounds strongly and it has opened up many opportunities, not only in Hong Kong, but overseas as well.
Atzeni has been in particular demand for Australia’s rich staying handicaps: he won the G1 Sydney Cup on Circle Of Fire for Ciaron Maher earlier this year and got down to 113 pounds to ride Godolphin stayer Zardozi to fourth in the Melbourne Cup last month.
“Riding in Australia is something I would obviously like to do more of,” he said. “I can’t ride 113 pounds for every horse but I will do it for a good chance. Winning that Sydney Cup was a big help for my profile in Australia and there are a lot of lightweight opportunities that come up in races like the Sydney Cup, Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup and we are very lucky in that the Hong Kong Jockey Club allows us to go overseas for select Group 1 races.”
Atzeni hails from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, which has produced a prodigious amount of top class jockeys. Most of them grow up wanting to ride in the iconic Palio di Siena, a chaotic but highly prestigious street race in which jockeys and their mounts tackle a treacherous course around a packed Piazza del Campo in Tuscany.
The 14-time Palio di Siena winner Andrea Degortes, nicknamed “Aceto”, hailed from Sardinia but so too do many great flat racing talents.
Most famously, Frankie Dettori and his father Gianfranco trace their roots through Sardinia and modern day globetrotters Alberto Sanna and Antonio Orani also grew up on the Italian archipelago.
Atzeni himself has won Group 1 races in seven different countries but his success over the past year has ensured that Hong Kong is now home.
“I looked at this as a place that I should try to stay as long as I can,” he said. “And if you are going to do that then you need to do everything you can to fit with the Hong Kong style.”
The next step for Atzeni is to find a flagship horse that can carry him to a Group 1 in Hong Kong – he won at Group 3 level twice last season, on Taj Dragon in the Chinese Club Challenge Cup and Nimble Nimbus in the Centenary Vase – but given the dedication and talent it took to re-establish himself in Hong Kong, surely big race success is just a matter of time ∎
