Hong Kong 2024/25 Season Preview: Trainers
Which Hong Kong trainer will emerge as this season’s improver? Who will win the Title? Who should the Club look to recruit? Our experts have their say at Idol Horse’s ‘Racing Roundtable’.
Who Will Win The Trainers’ Championship?
Luke Middlebrook: It seems unwise to oppose Pierre Ng, despite the sceptic in me suggesting that expecting another title-contending season after such an incredible second year is optimistic. His relentless pursuit of victories shows no sign of abating. His strong presence at the barrier trials leading up to the season opener indicates he intends to hit the ground running, as he did last season.
Many of his well-exposed horses were either retired or moved on during the off-season, and Ng starts the new campaign with a tactical edge, armed with 22 fresh horses in his yard. This influx of untapped potential sets him up for another promising season.
His title hopes get a further boost with champion jockey Zac Purton high on his call list. While Karis Teetan may have racked up more wins for Ng last season, Purton’s impressive strike rate of 15 wins from 66 starts shows why he’s the ace in Ng’s deck when called upon.
Michael Cox: Who wants to count John Size out? You can be sure that none of his rivals will, and you can be equally sure that they’ll have noted that after a tough season, the 12-time champion conducted a roster clean-out and has a number of new horses in his stable.
There are few things as exciting in Hong Kong racing as a Size-trained 52-rater stepping out for the first time, and the veteran Australian has 22 of them, plus the promising Britannia winner Mickley.
Sure, there were some concerns with Size’s performance last season, which was the first campaign since 2006/07 that his ‘wins per PPG’ had been less than the average for all trainers.
The common denominator among Size’s ‘bad’ seasons though? The bounce-back: just as a big season can beget a slump, a slow season can be the precursor to a big one in Hong Kong.
The youth-heavy make-up of Size’s stable indicates he has re-armed for a championship push. Those untapped youngsters will ensure a customary slow start, but the leaders will be looking over their shoulders come December.
Steven Ho: It seems as though the team is split between Pierre Ng and his ex-boss John Size, but I’m going for a trainer that has transformed into a perennial contender: Ricky Yiu.
Within the last decade, Size is the only trainer to have defended his champion title. The ratings-based system makes it challenging for trainers (and also their horses) to maintain performances across multiple seasons. Yiu had a decent season in 2023/24 with 60 winners, which is pretty close to his best season (67 winners), but he has staged a mini-rebuild and has the fresh blood needed to make a push.
Andrew Le Jeune: It has been 20 years since his last Championship (2004/05) but Tony Cruz has been a constant presence near the top of the championship since. Stable stars California Spangle and Beauty Joy will fly the flag in the big races, but multiple wins from up-and-comers is what wins titles and Cruz has a team of them, including Hong Kong Derby hope Stunning Peach. In what could be an open contest, Cruz’s consistency can clinch him the title.
Which Trainer Will Be The Biggest Improver This Season?
Luke Middlebrook: Cody Mo wound up his rookie season with 20 wins and the second-fewest starters among all trainers (301). That’s nothing to write home about, but those numbers should be easily improved upon.
His new horses weren’t asked to do too much, and many of his stable transfers were limited. Despite this, he managed to train at least one winner in each month of racing following his breakthrough success. While it might be premature to call Mo a sleeping giant, he’s poised to shake things up in the new season.
His stable has grown from 38 horses at the start of last season to 62 at the time of publishing and he now has space for up to 70 since he was allocated stables at Conghua from April 1. With his younger horses having more time to settle in, they’re primed to start racking up some wins. Mo’s top-rated horse, Magic Control, currently rated at 77 points, was acquired from Jamie Richards after just one run and arrived in Hong Kong highly touted. Keep an eye on his progress.
History is also in Mo’s favour for a strong second season. Since 2000, trainers in their second season often surpass their first-year performance.
Michael Cox: Mark Newnham doesn’t carry himself like a second-year trainer. Maybe it’s because he was such a frequent visitor to Sha Tin over the years that he seems like part of the furniture. Or it could just be the numbers: Newnham finished 14th with 31 wins in his first season, but it’s his 9.2 percent strike rate, good for seventh, that catches the eye.
The Australian built steadily through his first season, not over-populating his stable and leaving room for opportune transfers and fresh blood. At the time of writing, he has 63 horses, and 25 of them are yet to start (13 PPGs, 12 PPs).
Perhaps Newnham’s greatest strength is that he isn’t trying to outsmart the system – he just works hard and gets on with training winners. Now that the stable transfer wins have dried up, it’s time to produce the type of progressive unraced imports that string winning sequences together. On that score, Newnham seems to have gone about the bloodstock business in the right way and not fallen into the same traps some of his predecessors did.
Steven Ho: Despite the success of Lucky Sweynesse, Manfred Man had a relatively disappointing season in 2023/34. After hitting a personal best of 44 winners in 2022-23, it was expected he would dip, but 27 winners and 17th was a big slide. I think he is now back on an upward trend with 10 unraced PPGs in his stable and I expect him to have a great improvement with his new blood this season.
David Morgan: Frankie Lor had a brilliant start to his career with 65 wins in 2017-18, a record for a trainer in their first season. He kicked on from that to nail Group 1 wins, a clean sweep of the Four-Year-Old Series, including the Hong Kong Derby of course, and in 2021-22 he was ‘crowned’ champion trainer with a massive total of 90 wins. In 2022-23 he posted another 65-win haul, so his 2023-24 season’s tally of 46, placing a lowest-ever ninth in the standings, was well below par.
Given his status as one of Hong Kong’s best trainers, his record of consistent success prior to last season, and a batch of about a dozen untapped horses in his stable of 63, he surely must improve markedly on his anomalous campaign and finish this season closer to the 60-win mark.
Andrew Le Jeune: It seems strange to have Size in this category but based purely on last year’s results the stable is ready for a jump from last season’s 50 winners and seventh place. The last time Size dipped below 50 wins was in 2019/20 and he rebounded with over 70 the following year. It seems inconceivable that he’ll be finishing outside the top five again. Special mention to Jamie Richards who slid from a solid ‘rookie season’ return of 35 wins in 2022/23 to 31 wins last season. I think he can train more this season.
David Eustace, 31.5 Wins: Over Or Under?
Michael Cox: First of all, is training 31 winners a successful season in Hong Kong? Depends on your perspective or expectations. Are you a glass-half-full person? For a first-year trainer in Hong Kong, 31.5 is the average for the 26 first-year trainers since 1999/00.
The benefit that many of those trainers had, that Eustace doesn’t, is that they came to town after a trainer, or multiple trainers, had retired, creating a natural dispersal of horses, many of those horses crying out for a stable change and with points in hand.
Richard Gibson trained 35 winners in his first season, 2011/12, feasting off the leftovers of Alex Wong Yu-on. Despite all of Gibson’s success, he never trained that many winners in a season again. Speaking on the Idol Horse Podcast this week, Eustace was reluctant to define success as a number this season but said he would be happy with somewhere between “25 and 35 wins.”
Eustace has a PPG-heavy roster, so even if his win total does land under 31.5 wins, the glass-half-full newcomer will see that as success.
Andrew Le Jeune: Make no mistake if David Eustace does push above the 30-win mark in his debut season it can be considered a fantastic result, winners don’t come easily in Hong Kong. Eustace has a fantastic pedigree – he is the son of trainer James Eustace and nephew of former Hong Kong trainer David Oughton – and his grounding in both the UK and Australia has seemingly helped him adjust to Hong Kong life very quickly. The stable will need to grow throughout the year too, but Eustace has quiet confidence that suggests he can make an impact quickly.
Which Foreign Trainer Would You Most Like To See In Hong Kong?
Luke Middlebrook: If George Boughey isn’t on the Club’s ‘fresh blood’ radar, he should be. His rise through the British training ranks has been impressive: starting with just four horses and some doubts at age 27 in 2019, he has grown into one of the fastest-rising stables.
Boughey’s track record suggests he could thrive in Hong Kong. His success with revitalising cheaply bought horses would be highly valued in a place where stable transfers are common. He’s proven himself versatile though, not just a one-trick wonder.
Boughey’s training journey is well-grounded. He began in bloodstock, building key relationships with trainers, owners, and breeders, saying, “It was a great way of being introduced to people you’ll probably deal with for the rest of your life.” He then worked with Gai Waterhouse in Australia, joined Lloyd Williams’ operation in Melbourne, and returned to the UK. There, he spent six years as an assistant trainer with Hugo Palmer, a role he credits with having the biggest impact on him.
While the Club should keep an eye on Boughey, Boughey should also be considering the Club. Much of his operation is commercial, with the stable often selling promising horses due to the UK’s poor prize money. Moving to Hong Kong, where prize money is booming, could allow Boughey to focus solely on training.
Michael Cox: What if I told you that there is a trainer with 1,735 wins, five championships, and he’s waiting by the phone for the call? And he already lives in the city, with permanent residency no less. There’s no doubt John Moore would love to make a return. Realistically though, Moore is 74, and the recent appointments of Pierre Ng (aged 41), Jamie Richards (35), and now David Eustace (32) are examples of a concerted effort to arrest the ageing demographics of the training ranks.
So why not chase another bright young star and at the same time address Hong Kong racing’s other glaring demographic discrepancy? It’s embarrassing that the Hong Kong Jockey Club has never licensed a female trainer. The 32-year-old Neasham would be more than just a step in the right direction for gender equality, though; she is highly professional, ambitious, culturally aware, and has media savvy in spades. She brings a similar profile to Eustace: a great mix of British sensibilities and experience training on flat Australian racecourses similar to Sha Tin.
The problem? Convincing Neasham to move to Hong Kong might be next to impossible: she just entered into a training partnership with her partner, Rob Archibald, and has a large stable. But, if the club’s recruiters are serious about a generational shift, they should at least make that call.
Steven Ho: Richard Hannon Jr. won his first Irish Group 1 race with Rosallion in the spring, that horse having taken the G1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère in France last year and subsequently the G1 St James’s Palace Stakes this year. What makes Hannon interesting is that most of the G1 wins he has collected are with horses racing at around 1,600m or shorter, and nearly 75 percent of his 1,600-plus career wins are at 1,699m or less. That’s an ideal speciality to bring to the sprint- and mile-heavy Hong Kong environment.
I understand Hannon would not give up his connections in Britain easily, the stable is one of the biggest in England and is his long standing family home, but the HKJC should show its global ambition and shoot for somebody that could help shape the next era of Hong Kong racing.
David Morgan: This might seem a left-field longshot, but I’d like to see Donnacha O’Brien at Sha Tin. He’s made a good start to his career in Ireland since he started in 2020, winning seven Group 1s with Fancy Blue, Shale, Proud And Regal and Porta Fortuna. But Ireland is a crowded sphere and it’s dominated by his father Aidan, with his own brother Joseph vying with the likes of Jessica Harrington and Ger Lyons for the distant second spot.
Donnacha, for all his clear ability to ready a Group 1 winner, seems to be in the shadows by comparison, and a move halfway around the world to carve out his own name might be a great move. He would bring youth, he’s 26, as well as a lifetime of experience around not only horses, but also one of the greatest trainers the world has known. He was a champion jockey, too, don’t forget, so he knows all about winning and the pressure that comes with it.
His father has visited Hong Kong, and won big races there, several times previously and spent a good few days there last December, during which time he was shown around many of the facilities at Sha Tin. If Donnacha were to need some insights about what training facilities Hong Kong has to offer, some of the answers might be close at hand.
Andrew Le Jeune: Jerome Reynier is already a highly accomplished trainer in France and with him combining forces with Jean Claude Rouget at the start of next year, he will quickly become a powerhouse in world racing.
The Frenchman fits the mould for the next generation of up-and-coming HK trainers and also given the success of French jockeys in the region over the years it only goes to strengthen strategic links with France and Europe in general.
What Headline Would You Most Like To See?
Luke Middlebrook: “Eustace Poised For Strong Second Term After Impressive Finish”—the rookie trainer is aiming to finish strongly in his first campaign… If he and his horses hit their stride towards the end of the season, it would be a great sign for what’s coming next.
Michael Cox: “Size Surges Into Championship Contention As His True Champion Emerges”—Hong Kong racing needs at least one more Size championship run and the trainer deserves a career-defining horse that can put him on the world stage.
Steven Ho: “Chinese Trainers Dominate Championship Standings Again”—the gap has not only narrowed between locals and expats, Chinese trainers are now in the ascendancy.
David Morgan: “Yung Posts Career Best Total”—trainer Benno Yung’s health was a concern for much of last season, but he is holding onto the hope that he will be well enough to continue as a trainer this season. It would be great to see him healthy again, that’s the priority, but it would be a fantastic bonus to see him not only back but also firing in the winners like never before.
Andrew Le Jeune: “Tony In Cruz Control For Championship”—20 years on from his last, I’m not sure there would be a more popular winner. Cruz is still competing at the very highest level both at home and overseas. A true living legend in every sense of the term in both his riding and training career, another title would be a perfect anniversary gift.
