John Moore Is Back… As An Owner

JOHN MOORE has a broad smile on his face, a bounce in his step, and jokes that he now has a big decision to make. In the lower back corner of a 300 square foot walk-in wardrobe, Moore flicks through the iconic safari suits that he rocked at Sha Tin in his heyday … light blue, burgundy, navy blue and the classic khaki. He is wondering out loud which he will wear when he returns to Hong Kong racing this season in a new role: owner. 

“Hope I can still get the middle button fastened,” Moore says with a chuckle. “But seriously, it’s great to be back in Hong Kong, and involved in Hong Kong racing. I’m excited about the possibilities, but I am mostly just happy to be back amongst it at the track. Getting down into the enclosure and seeing the colours going around. Rubbing shoulders with some of the owners and everything that goes with it. And just showing that we’re here and that we’re here to win.” 

Moore’s signature safari suit colour is yet to be decided but his racing colours will be some variation of maroon-and-white, made famous as Moore’s stable silks in Hong Kong and more recently as a successful owner in Australia. Moore is head of a new syndicate, teaming up with Tim Wong, the son of longtime Moore owner Matthew, and first time owner Victor Lee, to form Go Racing. 

“Once we came back to Hong Kong from Australia, consolidated ourselves, my wife Fifi and I got together with a few owners, ex-owners and some very close friends, only 10 of us, and thought why don’t we put in a permit? So the original idea was to call it John Moore Racing Syndicate, but of course the Jockey Club stopped that because it was too close to the trainer syndicates in Hong Kong. So for some reason I just thought, ‘Go Racing’.”

It has been more than four years since Moore’s controversial retirement, age-limit enforced by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, at the end of the 2019-20 season, which ended a 35-year career that garnered a still-unsurpassed record of 1,734 wins. He then made two aborted attempts to return to training in Australia, first with brother Gary in Sydney, then solo on the Gold Coast. Both times he was left frustrated by staffing and facility issues. 

The 74-year-old is more at peace with not training now, if not with the contentious Jockey Club Licensing Committee decision to end his career. 

“I miss training … but the hours,” he says, his voice trailing off as he considers the toil of five solid decades in the stables. “To be a successful trainer, you have to be on virtually 24 hours, that wasn’t easy, but I did get into a routine and it was hard to get out of that routine. But now, I am not on that clock anymore, up at 4.30am, seven days a week. So I do miss training, but I don’t miss the lifestyle. It is non-stop.”  

“I do miss training but I don’t miss the lifestyle. It is non-stop.”

Still, the energy Moore carries gives the impression that he’d bounce back into trackwork at 4.30am tomorrow if given the chance. 

“Of course I would, this is the best place to train in the world,” he says. “Hong Kong. Definitely. Of all the jurisdictions I’ve been to, from my point of view, over the years, Hong Kong is the best: you have got the structure, the mafoos (stable staff), the management, everything in place, everything runs smoothly and it was just my job to go out and buy horses and train them.” 

We take a seat on the leather sofa in Moore’s office turned mini-racing museum  –  a ‘John Moore Fan Club’ sign sits beside the door on the fifth floor of the Cable TV building in Tsuen Wan. Moore needed this extra space to fit the trophies he has won and memorabilia he has gathered. In front of us a glass doored cabinet, floor-to-ceiling, covering an entire wall, is stacked with the spoils of a celebrated career. Trophies from 33 Group 1 wins, six Hong Kong Derby victories and seven trainers’ championships.  

On the coffee table are two scrapbooks, one that charts the career of Moore’s father George, an all-time great jockey. Clippings from 1946 talk about a new champion lightweight from Brisbane lighting up the Sydney scene, then towards the back of that book, headlines from the mid- to late-sixties proclaiming him the greatest Australian jockey of all time and winning the 1967 BBC International sportsman of the year for his exploits in the northern hemisphere. Another scrapbook covers the 1970s, George Moore’s training career and the 11 trainers’ championships in the formative years of professional racing in Hong Kong. 

Moore didn’t just step out of the considerable shadow cast by his father, but also that of his younger brother Gary, a seven-time champion jockey in Hong Kong, a champion in France and winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. The Moore name will always be synonymous with Hong Kong racing, but perhaps it is John who influenced the jurisdiction most. 

Despite winning more races than any trainer in history, for Moore it was always a case of quality over quantity. He raised the bar in terms of buying tried horses. At his current rate, John Size is likely to pass Moore for total wins before he retires and has a record 12 championships, but he is running out of time to match Moore for champion horses. On the wall behind the sofa, a framed poster features Moore’s nine horse of the year winners in order, seven of them in consecutive years: Makarpura Star (1994/95), Viva Pataca (2008/09), Military Attack (2012/13), Designs On Rome (2013/14), Able Friend (2014/15), Werther (2015/16), Rapper Dragon (2016/17) and Beauty Generation (2017/18 and 2018/19) . 

Now Moore and his syndicate are armed with the same type of Private Purchase (PP) permit for tried horses that was used to bring each of those former stars to Sha Tin. But how did Moore get a permit? To become an owner in Hong Kong, you must be a member of the Jockey Club, then ‘win’ a permit in a ballot. The story of how Moore came to be a full member of the club is its own little snippet of Hong Kong racing history. 

“In 1971, when dad managed to get me an amateur jockey license … I arrived on March 21st, 1971, dad had connections to the Hong Kong Jockey Club through riding in the United Kingdom. I got my amateur jockey license but to ride you had to be a full member of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. I had about twenty bucks in my pocket, how was I going to pay for it? Dad’s friends looked after it for me and I got through very quickly to ride as an amateur.” 

Moore had to ‘pause’ his membership when racing turned professional in October 1971 and again when he became a trainer in 1985. “I got my membership and gave it back three times … … when I was training I kept making sure with the membership people that I would get my full membership again when I retired.” 

The Go Racing Syndicate was originally on the ‘reserve list’ for PP permits but this year the club elevated 50 permits from the reserve list in a bid to boost the horse population and Moore had his chance. In the former trainer’s prime he would be hunting down a Group 1 contender with the PP permit but times have changed. The buying power of Hong Kong owners has decreased with a downturn in the economy and in Australia, where most of Moore’s most recent stars were sourced, owners are awash in prize money and reluctant to let go of their potential stars once they show any promise. 

Even if Moore was still training he admits that he would find it hard to buy the type of quality imports he was famous for. It is far more likely that Moore will bring a horse to Hong Kong that is racing in his maroon-and-white silks in Australia – but he might already have a horse that reaches Group 1 contender class anyway through his ownership in Australia. 

Amazing Eagle, a stakes-placed three-year-old by Capitalist that is majority owned by Moore, looms as a tantalising prospect. “He’s definitely on the short list to bring here,” Moore says. “That’s the sort of horse we’re looking at bringing, but he has a bit to do yet: he is group-placed, but he’s got to get up into group one-placed at least.” 

“We race with the same guys in Australia and we’ll just pick the best of what we’ve got. Most of our syndicate horses are trial winners. We had two trial winners at Hawkesbury the other day, one called Parting The Seas and the other one called Grand Eagle by Farnan.” 

The horse that will carry the Go Racing silks is yet to be decided but who will be in the hot seat as trainer for one of the greatest trainers of all time? Does Tony Cruz have inside running as the other grandfather to Moore’s first grandson Enzo, the first born of Cruz’s daughter Antonia and Moore’s son George? “Haha let’s see,” Moore says. In true Moore style he says that decision will be made over a long lunch. 

“So no, a particular trainer hasn’t been chosen, but some trainers are deleted for sure,” Moore says. “But I think it would be very hard to train for a successful trainer that’s done well in this jurisdiction … to train for me. I would have to say somebody who would work with me a bit. Okay, of course I won’t be training the horse, but I’d like to know what’s going on or what they are planning. I want to be able to go back to the syndicate and say, okay, I spoke to the trainer, finding out about his work, when he plans to trial him and the program.” 

Moore has kept his finger on the bloodstock pulse, in recent years sourcing horses with son George, but it is clear that being a potential owner has re-kindled his competitive fire: he is setting big goals, and like Moore of old, making bold statements. 

“I would love in time to bring a horse in to compete at the Hong Kong International Races,” he says. “This would be something that I’d love to do. I’d be coming here to win. That would be the ultimate.”