If anybody tells you they can guarantee success buying thoroughbred yearlings, run the other way. The truth is it’s a guessing game – yes some people are better judges than others, but even the best still buy bad horses. That’s just the caper.
And this is the busiest time of year for yearling sales. Magic Millions is this week, then Karaka in New Zealand, then the Inglis sales back in Australia. Thousands of horses, paraded like future champions. Everyone’s hunting “the next one”.
Here’s the part people don’t like hearing: you can walk through a sale and point out a heap of nice yearlings – beautiful types and great walkers – and still not have the faintest idea if they can gallop. No one does. That’s the mystery.
I always think of So You Think, a 10-time Group 1 winner that was eventually sold to Coolmore for a reported A$50 million. Years later, I had everybody telling me he was “the best-looking yearling they’d ever seen” and that they were underbidders on him. Funny thing is, he still only sold for NZ$110,000. There are plenty of geniuses after the ball game.
What makes the sales fascinating is that two great horse people can look at the same animal and see totally different things. Chris Waller likes a horse, but Gai Waterhouse likes a different type altogether. It’s in the eye of the beholder.
Now, if you’re buying for Hong Kong, you’ve got a whole other filter before you even get to “eye of the beholder”. The first thing is the vet. Hong Kong is stricter than anywhere. In my opinion, more than half of the colts you see at these big sales wouldn’t get through the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s vet protocols. That’s why you’d better have a good vet in your corner.
Then there’s the practical stuff. Size matters in Hong Kong. You don’t want a small yearling. And temperament matters just as much. Hong Kong is hot, it’s humid, the environment is confined – they’re boxed up. A nervous horse that sweats up can lose too much energy before he’s even got to the races. You want one that’s relaxed, quiet and conserves his energy.
People love talking about “good judges” and there are plenty of them. Some study the horse’s walk, by type and physical shape and know their pedigrees. Fair enough. But even good judges don’t hit 100%. It’s a gamble – and just like at the races, the best computer teams don’t back every winner.
Trainer Ricky Yiu is one of the best in Hong Kong at sourcing yearlings – he’s found too many good ones right back to Fairy King Prawn, Sacred Kingdom, Amber Sky and Voyage Bubble for it to be luck alone – but even then, nobody gets a clean sheet forever.
Me? I’m more comfortable at the ready-to-run sales, when they’re two-year-olds already in training and I can actually watch them gallop. I can see their action.
What am I looking for there? Well, it is hard to teach and hard to explain – the insight is gained from a lifetime around horses – but I know what I like. Something that lengthens and extends when asked for an effort.
But what am I looking for most of all?
Luck.
A Trainers’ Title Race That’s Already Taken Shape – But It’s Still Far Too Early
We’re 36 meetings into an 88-meeting season – just over 40% done – and the trainers’ championship has a clear look to it already. Four stables have broken away: Mark Newnham (30 wins), Caspar Fownes (29), David Hayes (25) and Danny Shum (25).
After that, there’s a break. Danny is five clear of Manfred Man on 20, and the rest are chasing.
I’ve had plenty to do with all four in the leading pack and know them all very well.
So who do I think wins it?
Honestly – it’s too early to call.
But I do have a couple of observations.
First:, I can’t see Danny having the ammunition to go toe-to-toe with the others all the way through the back half of the season.
Second: Mark Newnham is an interesting case because he’s had a few horses move out of the yard and that’s left him with room to recruit. He’s sitting on 61 horses out of a maximum 70. That gap matters. If he can bring in the right horses and get them settled quickly, it can give him a late-season kick. It’s a tight timeline – you’re asking a horse to arrive, adapt, barrier trial and be ready to win – but with more than six months left, it’s not impossible.
Caspar Fownes has that trump card of Happy Valley – he always seems to be able to find a winner there.
And then there’s the name you can never ignore.
The 13-time champion John Size is seventh on 17 wins, 13 behind Newnham, and he’s right in the middle of his annual climb up the ladder. He’s had nine winners from the last eight meetings, and anyone who follows this game knows what that usually means.
At the same stage last season, Size was seven wins off the lead – and he still won the championship with an eight-win cushion.
I’m not making a call yet, but the one thing I know for certain is this: John Size can still win it.
Make The Triple Trio Great Again
When I was at Sha Tin for the Hong Kong International Races I had two longterm Hong Kong punters who came to me and complained about the Triple Trio (TT).
I have to agree with them: I don’t like the way the Triple Trio jackpot is handled now – and I’ll tell you why in the simplest terms.
In the old days, when the Triple Trio didn’t have a winner, the jackpot rolled over into the next meeting. It stayed alive. It snowballed. And that was the whole point.
If you invested in it and missed, you hadn’t lost everything – you were coming back next week knowing the prize pool was getting bigger and you could get your money back.
Now the carry-over gets folded into a consolidated pot and spread around. The result is you don’t get those monster, week-to-week targets that pulled in serious money – from professionals and from everyday punters.
And here’s the other problem: when the pool isn’t big enough, the winning ticket can stop paying its true value.
When one leg is genuinely hard – and you need to play roughies properly – you should be rewarded when the upset lands. But if there isn’t enough money in the pool, the dividend can come back way under what it should be relative to the difficulty of the bet.
That changes behaviour. The big players don’t engage the same way. The big players who used to take the TT can’t justify it anymore – and without them the pool struggles to grow, which only makes the problem worse.
I don’t know what the internal figures say and I’m not pretending I do.
I just know what made the Triple Trio great: momentum, rollover and a jackpot that kept getting bigger until someone won it.
Bring that back. ∎
