Jamie Richards’ exciting four-year-old Bulb General has been ruled out of this season’s Classic Series after suffering a fetlock injury that will see him sidelined until the end of the campaign.
The four-year-old became an early contender for this season’s Hong Kong Derby with two wildly impressive wins to begin the season over 1200m at Sha Tin.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Richards said. “He was the horse that I was hoping would help fill the stable back up again, but that’s racehorses. You’ve got to ride the highs and the lows.”
Richards confirmed Bulb General will have surgery to his right fore fetlock on Monday before starting his road to recovery.
“He’s going to have surgery tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll take the chip out of his fetlock and give him a little bit of time. It was a 50-50 call whether he needed surgery, but we just thought long term rather than just thinking about the four-year-old series.
“He’ll be ready to race at the end of the season hopefully. He’ll have a couple of quiet months and hopefully he can start doing something in the New Year and build up from there.”
Bulb General’s emergence as a Derby hopeful couldn’t have come at a better time for Richards.
After losing 22 horses to other stables – more than any other trainer – in a 2024-25 season he frankly described as “shocking”, the trainer has hit the ground running this term. Bulb General has provided Richards with two of his eight wins over the first 14 meetings.
“I think he’s a really talented horse and the owners have been very supportive,” he said. “We’re ticking along nicely but it’s heartbreaking when you lose your best runner.”
Richards returned to the winner’s enclosure at Sha Tin on Sunday thanks to the victory of Goldentronicmighty in the third race on the card.
He sat in seventh in the trainers’ championship going into Sunday’s meeting and had the fourth-best strike rate among all trainers, behind title leaders Mark Newnham and Caspar Fownes and new arrival Brett Crawford. ∎
