Tuesday morning, all was well. Vincent Ho had made it to Goodwood for the first day of the famous ‘Glorious’ festival, but Monday had been different. Monday was like a line from The Cure’s 1992 hit song Friday I’m in Love: “Monday you can hold your head,” frontman Robert Smith sang in that famous ode to the weekend.
Ho may well have been holding his head in frustration and a bit of comic disbelief as he stood beside his stricken rental car in south London for a few hours through Monday afternoon and into the early evening. A new tyre was required. A new one arrived.
“They brought the wrong tyre,” Ho told Idol Horse as he continued to wait patiently beside the BWM “somewhere in Battersea.”
It was looking like he would need a replacement car and he figured that would mean making his way south to Gatwick airport, right next door to Crawley, the West Sussex town that gave the world The Cure, and about 35 miles across-county from Goodwood racecourse. It was an inconvenience he could do without.
But, to pull another line from The Cure’s decades-spanning anthem celebrating simple joys, “I don’t care if Monday’s blue” fits well with Ho’s general outlook on life; his calm, measured positivity even when things aren’t going quite as he’d like.
Eventually the Hong Kong jockey was on his way and looking forward to a weekend ride at Goodwood – he’s hoping for more than one – and to the next weekend beyond that, the Shergar Cup at Ascot, when he will captain the newly-formed Hong Kong team, leading Jerry Chau and Luke Ferraris against some of the world’s best.
Ho, most famous for his partnership with the great champion Golden Sixty, is at Goodwood this week at the invitation of the racecourse executive, which is keen to promote the World Pool fixture to as wide an audience as possible. He’s a working ambassador of sorts.
His one booked Goodwood mount, so far, is the George Baker-trained Alcaraz in Saturday’s nine-furlong handicap. Ho is looking forward to it: it will be his first time riding at Goodwood since the summer before last when he had nine rides at the meeting, his best being second-place on Brioni, beaten a neck in the Kincsem Handicap.
Since then, he has battled back through tough rehabilitation from serious injury. This time last year, he was pushing through the final weeks of rehab from a brain injury suffered in a race fall at Sha Tin. He worked through this past Hong Kong season for 38 wins and sixth place in the premiership, respectable, no doubt, but a drop off from his peak.
But his ambition to be the best he can be and his enthusiasm for the sport he loves have never waned and he has prepared for Goodwood and Ascot with a few days in Newmarket.
“I rode out at Roger Varian’s,” he said. “Mr. Varian let me ride a horse (Golden Conqueror) of Stanley Chan’s, Golden Sixty’s owner, and another horse owned by Yulong, so that was pretty cool, out there in Newmarket seeing and riding the different gallops and the hills.”
In past years he has based himself in North Yorkshire, and Charlie Johnston’s famous Middleham yard.
“But it’s a short summer for me this year,” Ho said. “I’m committed to these five days at Goodwood and then the Shergar Cup at Ascot, and after that I might have a few days to ride some more here before I need to leave.”
Having Ho at Goodwood and having a Hong Kong team at this year’s Shergar Cup speaks to World Pool’s influence on Britain’s major race tracks and its importance to their revenues. It is hardly coincidental that this year’s first Hong Kong team has happened the first time the Shergar Cup has been included for betting via the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s World Pool, which commingles bets from pari-mutuel pools around the world into a single super pool.
It also emphasises the emergence and maturation in the past few years of Hong Kong’s young expat riders like Ferraris, but especially its homegrown talents, like Ho and Chau, those riders who have passed through Hong Kong’s apprentice jockey school and succeeded in mixing it week on week with greats like Zac Purton, Joao Moreira and Hugh Bowman.
“It’s a privilege to be team captain for team Hong Kong this first time,” Ho says. “We’re not in the world team or the Asia team anymore, we’re actually representing Hong Kong, which although it’s pretty big in world racing, it’s still only one city, so it’s huge.
“It’s great to lead these young riders, they’ve improved a lot this season and it’s good for them to have the experience to ride in the UK against these other great riders from around the world. We have legends from Japan, Yutaka (Take) and Christophe (Lemaire), with other great riders from all across the world.
“Hopefully we get some decent rides and get some points, but we’ll enjoy it, that’s the most important thing.”
Ho describes Ascot as “one of the best tracks I’ve ever ridden” but before he heads to Berkshire and the royal racecourse, he’s got these five days high on the southern rim of the picturesque South Downs at one of the most unique racecourses he’s ever seen.
“I enjoy riding at Goodwood a lot because of the different variety,” he said. “All the distances, the races are very different. There are straight races, you know, going uphill, downhill, it’s completely crazy. Those hills are no joke.
“When you turn in it’s still quite a while to go to the finish line, so you have to feel your horse, when to press the button and all that. And even after the finish line, you have to stop the horse because there’s nowhere to go around. It’s not a circular track.
“There’s a good atmosphere: everyone’s enjoying themselves; it’s fun riding there.”
Ho is looking forward to the next two weekends and his captain’s role at Ascot. With his injuries and physical rehab experiences behind him, his return to his working holiday routine is welcomed.
A Goodwood win would be a bonus; captaining Hong Kong to Shergar Cup victory would be a weekend to remember, putting those Monday car blues in Battersea far behind him. ∎
