Timing Is Right For Brett Crawford, Hong Kong’s Next Trainer
South African trainer Brett Crawford will make the move to Hong Kong ahead of next season and is relishing the prospect of testing himself internationally.
THE TIMING is right for Brett Crawford, Hong Kong’s newest trainer on the coveted Hong Kong Jockey Club roster who will take charge of his new stable at the end of the current campaign in mid-July.
It was a different story a little more than three years ago when Crawford applied, making it as far as the final stages, but he was not the Club’s eventual pick in a strong field of candidates. On reflection, he believes it would have been a more complicated move then than it is now.
“It’s the path that has presented itself,” he tells Idol Horse, sagely, speaking by phone from a Hong Kong hotel room. “They chose Jamie Richards at the time, and to be honest, I pretty much just parked the whole Hong Kong idea because my son was getting involved in the industry. So, for the last three years we’ve been building our business at home.”
Crawford Racing has enjoyed notable successes in that time: the stable took the G1 Cape Fillies’ Guineas and the G1 Paddock Stakes with Make It Snappy, the G1 Mercury Sprint thanks to Surjay, and most strikingly, the last two editions of the G1 Durban July with Winchester Mansion and Oriental Charm. All of those wins bolstered Crawford’s impressive career haul that also featured among his Group 1 triumphs the Cape Town Met, Cape Guineas, Cape Derby, Champions Cup and Daily News 2000.
And all the while his son, James Crawford, was learning and developing, gaining the experience he would need to step up and become a lead partner in the South African business: the main lead, as it turns out.
“The beginning of December James and I took out a joint licence,” Crawford says. “And at the same time the Hong Kong Jockey Club came back to me and asked me if I’d be interested in being a trainer here in Hong Kong.”
Talk about timing. With his children all grown up and James ready to take hold of the reins at home, the signs were clear that the time for a Hong Kong move was now.
But Crawford had seen before when the time was right, though not for himself: it was back in 2013 when his young stable jockey came to him with an offer he had received to ride in Hong Kong.
“He was the first person I asked when I got offered the job in Hong Kong and he said ‘You go ahead, this is your opportunity,’” says Karis Teetan, who has carved out a lucrative career in Hong Kong in the 12 years since.
Now it is Crawford’s time and he says he feels he is ready to make the move to a new home, along with his partner Gwen Macgregor.
“Hong Kong is something that I’ve strived to do and it’s come at a very good time for me personally, in terms of my business at home, that my son’s now part of, he’s going to take it over so it’s come at a really good time,” Crawford says.
Yet there is more to the good timing than that. Crawford is 53, he has spent the bulk of his career in a country that because of restrictions around exporting horses – due to fears over the spread of African Horse Sickness – has struggled to travel horses to compete internationally.
He has watched as Hong Kong’s stars, notably Romantic Warrior, have travelled and competed in Dubai, Australia, and Japan, and while he speaks glowingly of the Jockey Club’s integrity and its professionalism, as a competitive sportsman, he also wants in on that ability to travel and mix it on the world stage.
“Hong Kong is a platform to be able to travel if you have a good horse. I think the local Hong Kong horses have shown in the last two years what they can do,” he says.
“Being in South Africa it’s very hard to do. I did do it in 2017 with a horse (Whisky Baron) that won a Group 1 for me at home, but it’s very difficult to go through the route we had to take with quarantine restrictions, and it made it very difficult to get the best out of a horse.”
When the European Union (EU) lifted its ban on direct imports of horses from South Africa, and protocols changed, it opened the prospect of South African horses moving more easily to Hong Kong and that is something Crawford is keen to tap into. He already has experience training horses in South Africa for former Hong Kong trainer Tony Millard and his Hong Kong owners, which then exported to Hong Kong to continue their careers.
“It was hard on those horses taking them as three-year-olds at the prime of their career, it was difficult and I think a lot of them struggled to adapt to Hong Kong after being out for so long to go through that quarantine process,” he points out.
“The way the protocols have changed, now we’ve got a much shorter export, and that was proved last weekend with the horse that won the second to last race at Sha Tin, Mid Winter Wind: you know he only left South Africa in September, arrived in Hong Kong in October, and basically three months later he won.
“So, I think all things have tied in and I’ve been fortunate enough to be given an opportunity now: with South Africa opening up I think it’s a big win for myself and it’s a great time to try and expose some South African horses now in Hong Kong.”
Crawford, Zimbabwe-born (or Rhodesia as it was known in his birth year, 1971), has made his name in South Africa as a big-race trainer with a wealth of experience yet it all stems from his grandfather who had no other connection to the game than being an enthusiastic racegoer.
His two older brothers helped things along once he’d caught the bug: they were friends with the sons of trainer Brian Muscutt and by age “12 or 13” Crawford was working away at the Muscutt stables outside of school hours. At 18 he moved to South Africa and learned the business working under Mike de Kock, Peter Muscutt (Brian’s son), Eric Sands and Dennis Drier, then in 2001 he went on his own as private trainer to Sabine Plattner. After eight years and seven Group 1 wins, that ended, and in October 2009 he established Crawford Racing out of Cape Town, with a Johannesburg satellite yard.
All of that experience gave him a keen understanding of the nuances and unique approaches required to train at each of South Africa’s three major training centres. And he’s keen now to get out and explore new horizons.
“Cape Town has very different training facilities to what you would be exposed to in Durban and again on the Highveld in Johannesburg, training at altitude, it’s completely different,” he says.
“I’ve also been exposed to training in Newmarket for a short period when I had my horse (Whisky Baron) there preparing for Dubai, and also in Dubai for a short period. For me, when you travel, you gain knowledge and there’s nothing like knowledge.”
And he is open, indeed excited, to add training in Hong Kong to his knowledge base and learn all he can with a view to succeeding in one of the sport’s most difficult and high-pressure environments.
Teetan, an ever-present fixture in Hong Kong since Crawford advised him to take his opportunity, believes his old boss has what it takes to make it work too.
“His record doesn’t lie, he’s won all those major races in South Africa, he’s just got better season by season,” Teetan says. “He’s one of the top guys in South Africa, that’s for sure, he’s done really well the last couple of years and he deserves to be here.
“I think the Jockey Club has the right person, he has the kind of attitude you need to train in Hong Kong. He’s the kind of guy that is always willing to learn and try to improve himself in different ways, and I think he will understand the way Hong Kong is and will understand how to train in Hong Kong, so if he gets the support he deserves, I think he will do well.”
Crawford is under no illusions as to the task ahead of him though. He knows it will be ultra-competitive and that there will be challenges to overcome, but again, he believes he is in the right stage of his career to succeed in the environment.
“I think it’s extremely competitive, so I do think in some ways it’s like basically starting from scratch again for me,” Crawford says. “But I’ve had a very good grounding, my feet are on the ground, and I think it’s just working through the process, learning the different ways and different things that work here, and just adapting to the environment that I’m going to be in now.
“I personally believe, from what I’ve seen, you’ve got to keep the horses happy because I think it is a little bit of a tough environment for a horse. I think it’s going to be very challenging, but like everything in life, no challenge comes unrewarded.”
He has been to Hong Kong a handful of times and has visited Conghua, so he knows the basics of what to expect, but he admits he has a lot to learn about the city and its racing culture, and that is a big part of the eager anticipation he feels. He talks about the local belief in luck and how a perception of bad luck can be debilitating, while a person considered to have good luck can flourish on the updraught of keen support.
“I think that’s one of the big things that I will have to become familiar with, to understand and make adjustments. It will be important for me to appreciate the culture and take it in and basically just embrace it, and I’m looking forward to that,” he says.
“This is going to be another journey to adapt and to take what you can from the people and what is happening around you and learn,” he adds. “It’s exciting.” ∎
