Happiness Underpins Lau’s ‘Romantic’ Approach To Racing

PETER LAU PAK-FAI still has big things in mind for Romantic Warrior. And why not? The horse has already proven he’s a rare kind of champion thanks to winning a G1 Cox Plate in Australia and a G1 Yasuda Kinen in Japan, and he’s dominated his domestic patch at Sha Tin this season.

The owner is looking for another unprecedented hat-trick for his star galloper to complement a G1 QEII Cup hat-trick he achieved in April, with a third G1 Hong Kong Cup this December being the goal. After that, the man who has been a passionate follower of Hong Kong racing since childhood will consult with his trainer Danny Shum and again consider overseas options as they chase the world prize money record.

“I would like it if my horse could be the top money earner in the world, and I think we are in striking range now,” he says of Romantic Warrior, who has HK$15.2 million to make up on Golden Sixty’s world record HK$167 million earnings.

“We are thinking about some opportunities in maybe Dubai or Saudi Arabia,” Lau continues, but adds that there is an appealing domestic challenge that could enter serious consideration if travelling is ruled out.

“Only River Verdon has won the Hong Kong Triple Crown,” he notes, “so after the Hong Kong Cup we will decide whether to go for the Triple Crown or go to Saudi Arabia or Dubai. He will turn seven years old this season so we will take it race by race.”

The Hong Kong Triple Crown concept is a shibboleth of a past age: open to older horses, it is rarely attempted and requires wins in the G1 Stewards’ Cup at a mile, the G1 Hong Kong Gold Cup at 2000 metres a month later, and then three months on from that, a late-season 2400-metre victory in the G1 Champions & Chater Cup.

But Lau’s approach to the sport is not influenced by prevailing fashions. It comes from the happy memories of his boyhood years watching the TV with his father and grandfather as his heroes raced at Sha Tin and Happy Valley, and it is combined with the optimistic foresight and strategic thinking that saw him make his fortune via the import and export business, which in turn developed into International Housewares Retail Company Limited, and the city’s almost ubiquitous Japan Home Centre chain.

“When I started my business, I had two goals at the time,” he says. “The first was to get my company listed (on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange) and the second was to become a horse owner. In 2013 I got both done in the same year.”

It is 3:30pm on a Wednesday when Lau takes the Zoom call for his interview with Idol Horse, two days before the end of season Champion Awards where he hopes Romantic Warrior will have done enough to eclipse Golden Sixty as Horse of the Year. It is a sweltering 34 Celsius in the Hong Kong streets outside but in a few hours he will be at Happy Valley Racecourse among friends, enjoying the excitement of the sport he has followed for most of his 67 years.

“It goes way back, before I reached my legal age for betting,” he smiles. “Every weekend I was looking at the TV and soon I got my own idols: for me, Tony Cruz and Gary Moore were like David Beckham and Pele, they were my sports idols and the George Moore stable was just like Manchester United.

“I’ve been watching Tony Cruz since he was a young jockey battling with Gary Moore, that was one of the best times, the battle between those two. Racing was a big focus in Hong Kong, even more than now, because at that time on race days they’d put up the red flag and that meant the whole racecourse was full; you’d have to line up for a few hours before it opened to get in. It was a really big thing.”

Lau’s love for the sport and its heroes shapes him as a traditional type of a racehorse owner in the sense that he is a sportsman first, a man who loves the challenges the sport brings and who backs it up with his actions and his wallet. A HK$10.5 million Hong Kong International Sale purchase turned heads back in 2017 and he recently spent big on the Aidan O’Brien-trained Capulet, though how big is for him to know.

And he was unperturbed when last year he decided to break the recent trend of Hong Kong’s star gallopers staying at home for safer pickings rather than undertake the unknown elements of overseas competition.  

More Hong Kong owners than not have run scared of testing their champion horse outside of what they perceive as its comfort zone – just look at the brilliant Beauty Generation’s domestic-only Hong Kong career – but Lau enjoys those tests and understands his responsibility to the horse and its legacy.

“I think this might be a once in a lifetime chance to own such a nice horse and if I just keep him in Hong Kong, it’s like winning a gold medal at home and not going to the Olympics,” he says.

“If we had missed this chance I don’t know when or if ever we’d get this chance again. We won the three biggest money-earning races in Hong Kong, and of course we try to repeat that, but I couldn’t see why we wouldn’t go out and try to win races overseas; I understand the risk but I think it’s the kind of risk we should take.”

He says Romantic Warrior’s Cox Plate success last year was like “a long, twisting movie with sort of a terrible beginning and then after overcoming difficulties it was happy at the end.”

He recalls the typhoon that caused the horse’s final barrier trial to be cancelled, the weight-loss due to not being able to give the horse his usual feed initially, the Turnbull Stakes defeat, then the return to form, the huge run at Moonee Valley, the mistaken belief from Lau’s vantage point that he had lost, then the photo finish result and accompanying elation.

For all of that, and the major wins in Hong Kong, notably the Derby and two Hong Kong Cups, Lau says the Yasuda Kinen triumph in June is the one that stands out.

“Australia was more about me wanting to show the competitive side, that he was good enough to travel there and win, but Japan was also about the social side,” he says. “I’ve done business with Japan for 40 years and I have many Japanese friends, so to win there was more meaningful. And I also love the Japanese horse racing fans, they are so enthusiastic, and the Japanese media are so keen to report on the horses.”

He turns away from the screen and pulls out a Japanese newspaper. “Look at this,” he says gleefully and unfolds it to its full broadsheet width to reveal a large image of Romantic Warrior and jockey James McDonald celebrating the Yasuda Kinen win, printed across the whole span, front and back.

“That win has given me the most joy because of the friendships and the atmosphere, and of course it’s such an important race in the racing world, so for now my happiest race was in Tokyo,” he adds.

It has not always been a smooth ride for Lau as an owner though. He points out that his first horse, King of Household, raced 25 times without winning, his second Household Chef won one from six, the HK$10.5 million ISG (International Sale Graduate) Household King won the first of two starts but never raced again, and he currently has Romantic Hero, once-raced at Sha Tin in November but sidelined with a recurring near-fore tendon injury ever since.

“I understand this is horse racing,” he says. “Three weeks from now we can have another scan to determine whether Romantic Hero can go to the gallop again so fingers crossed.”

In the meantime, he has the excitement of the unknown in the former Coolmore-owned Listed Dee Stakes winner Capulet, a horse that has already sparked much discussion among Hong Kong’s online racing forums.   

“Capulet is a name from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but I heard about that after I bought the horse,” he says, scotching any notion that he was swayed to buying because of the ‘romantic’ theme.

“I do have a new name for the horse but it has not yet been approved by the Jockey Club, so I will announce it later, but there is a website that has many people guessing the name of the horse. A few days ago, I went to the site again and one person guessed correctly already.”

His agent, Eric Sze of Standard Bloodstock, sourced Capulet, which he has in partnership with Suki Tang Xianfang, but Lau also gives a nod to Shum. Because of the hefty fee involved, Lau wanted to know as much as possible, so Shum called up the horse’s jockey in Europe, Ryan Moore.

“Ryan sent me a full-page 1000-word written report to describe this horse and it was mostly positive so we decided to go for it,” Lau reveals. “If he can get to the Four-year-old Series I will be very happy.

“It is my motto that I would rather buy a good horse at a wrong price than buy a bad horse: I don’t mind buying a good horse at the wrong price. I understand sometimes maybe you can get a bigger budget horse or more value for money, but I’m not looking for the return of investment, I’m looking for happiness in the investment.”

It’s that happiness that underpins Lau’s approach to racehorse ownership and liberates him to choose the path less travelled.

Yes, he has the wealth to make a big purchase and he has enjoyed the fortune of owning a champion – that all lifts it to another plateau – but the root of his happiness lies in his sporting outlook and a lifelong romance with racing ∎