Francis Lui’s Purton-Powered Charge To Championship

TRAILING HIS FORMER ASSISTANT Pierre Ng by three wins with five races to go in a 831-race season, Francis Lui’s chances of his first ever Trainers’ Championship had seemingly evaporated, but the thunder that rumbled across Sha Tin was a portent of things to come. 

On a sweltering day that swung between blue skies, high humidity, and, as twilight descended, sudden downpours to a backdrop of thunder and lightning, the wild weather provided a fitting ambience for the Season Finale. 

Jockey Zac Purton never seems far from the eye of a storm and so it was as the 2023-24 campaign came to its conclusion. With his seventh Jockeys’ Championship long assured, Purton inserted himself into the centre of the story with a virtuoso performance that helped lift Lui to victory. 

“It was an exciting day to be part of, the ebb and flow of it, it had everybody on the edge of their seats,” Purton said. 

After race six, Lui and Purton reeled off three straight wins to level the Trainers’ Championship at 69 with two races to go.

A runner-up finish in Race 10 put Lui in front on countback before Hugh Bowman steered Lui’s Patch Of Theta to victory and made it 70-69. 

“This was sport at its best, Hong Kong really is the biggest show in town,” Hong Kong Jockey Club CEO Winfried Egelbrecht-Bresges told Idol Horse after the last. 

A crowd of more than 30,000 was a record for a twilight meeting and that came after a near-capacity crowd of 17,000 at Happy Valley earlier in the week. 

The club is pushing hard for racing to be seen as it should be in Hong Kong: the city’s number one sport, a cultural force and, of course, a massive contributor to government coffers. But for all of the time and money spent on marketing, Sunday’s storylines showed the sport itself creates the type of unscripted drama that no marketing guru could ever dream of. What happens on the track is what makes racing great and what happens behind the scenes gives it meaning. 

Maybe to tell the full story of the Season Finale we need to start on Friday, at the club’s Champion Awards, which is traditionally a staid, albeit lavish, black-tie function. The most raucous the crowd usually gets is a polite round of applause. But on Friday a rousing speech by trainer Danny Shum, in Cantonese, had the Hong Kongers in attendance pumping their fists with pride. 

Shum was on stage for Romantic Warrior’s Horse of the Year award for an outstanding season that included victories in the Cox Plate and Yasuda Kinen. He described the teachings of his former boss Ivan Allan as “an inheritance” but the main point was the growing self-belief among Hong Kong’s homegrown talent. 

“Chinese can win overseas races,” he said. “Local trainers and Chinese can win and travel. We can bring glory to Hong Kong and do something for Hong Kong.” 

Not only did a Chinese trainer produce Horse of the Year for the fourth straight season, but homegrown trainers dominated the categories too as Champion Sprinter (California Spangle, Tony Cruz), Champion Miler (Golden Sixty, Lui), Champion Stayer (Five G Patch, Cruz) and Champion Four-year-old (Galaxy Patch, Pierre Ng) awards all went to horses trained by handlers born and raised in Hong Kong. 

That two local trainers fought out the championship – Ng in just his second year and Lui, who has spent most of his 28-season career stationed mid and lower ranks – wasn’t considered a surprise, is a sign of the most significant change that has swept through Hong Kong racing over the last decade. 

When Dennis Yip clinched the title in the final race of the 2012-13 season – the first time in 18 years a local trainer other than Tony Cruz had achieved the feat – it was considered at best a feel good story and, by many, a fluke. On reflection it was a sign of things to come. Local trainers were earning respect and now, after championships to Frankie Lor (2021-22) and Ricky Yiu (2022-23), it is accepted that Chinese trainers can contend and they are benefitting from long-deserved support. 

Look at the table today: for the first time ever, the top five trainers in the trainers’ championship were locals and past perennial contenders Caspar Fownes, John Size and David Hayes were on the outside looking in, finishing sixth, seventh and eighth. 

Lui, 65, with a kind nature and friendly manner, might be the most popular trainer in Hong Kong among his peers. His four winners were all as-yet-fully untapped Private Purchase Griffins (PPGs), the types of horses that should ensure he is a contender for a few seasons yet. 

Seeing a maiden championship slip through his fingers was a sucker punch for Ng, but at just 42 and with the ability to match his ambition, there seems a certainty that he will be up on stage receiving a champion trainer trophy soon enough. 

While local trainers are on the rise, some could sense the winds of change in the jockeys’ ranks too. Shum’s speech sparked life into the Champions Awards, but the awards night was also notable for the fact that Purton, an all-time great, wasn’t there and that Australia-based James McDonald was. 

Purton’s ‘Season Finale’ had started in the stewards’ room, before race one, when he was cleared of wrongdoing after a contentious inquiry into his ride aboard Nebrasken on Wednesday night at Happy Valley had been adjourned. 

With that hearing hanging over his head, he was a no show on Friday, and McDonald was treated like a guest of honour. Interviewed in front of the crowd, host (and Idol Horse team member) Andrew Le Jeune gently suggested Hong Kong might make more sense as a permanent home, rather than a lucrative fly-in, fly-out option. 

As the crowd responded with joyous hoots and spontaneous applause, McDonald blushed and deftly deflected the question, “I thought that question might be coming,” he said. “I’ll be back here in December.” 

The Champion Awards seemed like part of an elaborate courtship for the obvious heir apparent to Purton and on Saturday the Hong Kong Jockey Club had ‘J-Mac’ touring the city with his wife Katelyn, camera crew in tow, romancing the pair with a trip on the Star Ferry, sitting down for dim sum and visits to some of Hong Kong’s most Instagrammable tourist spots. 

On Sunday, after a slickly produced video of McDonald enjoying Hong Kong played on the big screen, he was soon throwing Romantic Warrior ‘plushies’ into the young crowd that surrounded the parade ring for a performance by popular singer Raymond Lam after the presentation ceremony. 

It may be surprising to overseas fans, but Purton doesn’t enjoy overwhelming popularity with local fans and it was reflected in the cool reception he received from the crowd when stepping on stage to lift his seventh jockeys’ championship trophy. 

The jockey received mostly jeers and whistles after a week when some on social media, spurred on by the adjourned inquiry, had the pitchforks and tiki torches out for ‘Pundon’ (Purton’s Chinese name).

But this parade ring crowd at Sha Tin is particularly hard to please: Purton had just won six races, including four on short-priced favourites, but he isn’t alone in being booed by local fans.

It comes with the territory of being top jockey: Joao Moreira caught his share of hate – the shattered rider was booed viciously after young star Rapper Dragon had just suffered fatal injuries in a race – and Douglas Whyte was cruelly mocked and heckled as his dominance declined towards the end of his career.   

Maybe if McDonald ever decides to come to town he will find out for himself that it is much easier to be popular when throwing free plush toys to the punters than riding odds-on favourites for them. 

Was Purton put out by the attention lavished upon McDonald? Did he have a point to prove to stewards? If so, he wasn’t saying it, just simply that he ‘had a job to do’, and his post-meeting comments were considered. 

“It was a great way to finish what has been a testing but fruitful season,” he said. “It was nice to finish with six winners and great to be part of both Pierre and Francis’ seasons and push towards a championship. It was tough, and there was an extra little bit of pressure to do well for both trainers, but at the end of the day my job is to give every horse the best possible chance.” 

Taken in its entirety, the day showed that Purton is still a dominant force in Hong Kong racing and that, for whatever dramas he wants to create for himself by being outspoken, he has an ability to shut out the noise and perform under pressure that is unmatched by his rivals. 

Out in the crowd, and in the HKJC strategy, things are changing too.

Wagering was down this season, total turnover sliding 5.7% year-on-year on the local product, bolstered slightly by growth in simulcasts and the rapidly growing World Pool partnerships. 

Not only is the club pushing the sporting and tourism aspect of its product, but it is also looking at expansion. An extended racing schedule at the club’s mainland track in Conghua, Guangdong, is rapidly approaching, and Engelbrecht-Bresges proudly pointed out that the club now has more than 60 overseas commercial partners and that there were more than 6,000 visitors from mainland China at the races on Sunday. 

“We have a formal collaboration with China Travel Service (CTS) which is the biggest travel service on the mainland,” he said. “They bring, as a state-owned enterprise, many mainland tourists to the races. Racing is central to Hong Kong’s culture and entertainment, and the city’s tourism.” 

“We have a vision here to create entertainment, and it is not only about wagering,” 

On that score, Sunday’s Season Finale was as good as it gets, producing another legendary night in Hong Kong racing’s rich history.