David Eustace’s first season in Hong Kong has naturally brought a few ‘firsts’ his way and in Sunday’s Centenary Sprint Cup the talented Victor The Winner is set to be his first runner from his Sha Tin base to contest a Group 1 in the city.
Victor The Winner is already proven in that sphere: a year ago the gelding won the same race for his former handler Danny Shum, but a subsequent dip in form led his owner Chu Yun Lau to decide a move to new quarters would do him good.
That Chu chose Eustace as the trainer to rekindle the bay’s fire is in line with the stable’s growth and says plenty about the start the Englishman has made to his time in Hong Kong and the buoyancy of his reputation. And the same can be said of last month’s arrival of Massive Sovereign: first-season trainers don’t usually pick up the latest Hong Kong Derby winner as a stable transfer.
Massive Sovereign is recovering from surgery to insert a screw in his near-hind, a “straightforward operation”, and the trainer said the five-year-old has been a model patient as he continues through his prescribed three months “on the easy list”.
“If Massive Sovereign gets a run at the end of the season that will be great, but the owners’ group are happy to be patient and if it means just getting him ready for next season that’ll be fine,” he told Idol Horse. “He’s very well-behaved and seems a lovely horse to deal with.”

Eustace has turned heads as a newcomer with the potential to make it in a fickle and intensely competitive environment. His nine wins so far are a promising rather than a sensational start, but his accompanying method and manner have impressed enough people that matter to have grown his initially modest string to a near-capacity 71 horses.
That tally includes 25 stable transfers, as well as 14 PPs that have overseas form but are yet to race in Hong Kong and 20 completely clean slates, unraced PPGs.
“Most are either young horses or horses that have had two or three stables, so it’s a really mixed bag,” he said. “They’re racing consistently and a large percentage are running to their odds or their mark, and even a bit better than that, so I’m quite happy just with the form of the stable.
“I took my time and didn’t run them for the first month because I was quite keen to have them ready when I did run. I didn’t start with a lot of horses and was keen to build the stable up and get some horses, and if that came with transfers or with orders, that was pretty key.
“The fact that the stable is close to full is great and if I can keep them in the right sort of form then, hopefully, we can get the winner’s tally between the 20 and 30 mark.”

A flagship win in a big feature wouldn’t do any harm either, but as Victor The Winner’s form line since his fine Group 1 third in Japan last March reads 7, 6, 6, 7, 14, and with the sensational Ka Ying Rising in opposition, the handler is keeping his expectations to the sensible side of positive. But he is confident in the horse’s wellbeing.
“The hope is he’ll run well. He arrived to us in good condition, sound, and I couldn’t fault him in any way: Danny (Shum) did a fantastic job with him,” Eustace said. “We’re just hoping a change of environment might improve him on what he’s done in his last two or three runs.
“I’m hoping for a good run, I haven’t had him long so it’s difficult to really know, but all the key parameters look good. He looks fantastic and his action is great so he seems a happy horse. He’s a very kind, very straightforward horse, and he trialled nicely last week.”
That trial at Happy Valley was all part of the ‘freshening’ approach that also included a month in the quieter environs of the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Conghua training centre in Guangdong.
“I just felt his trials on the Sha Tin dirt tapered off slightly, and they’re always pretty strong hit-outs there,” Eustace said. “Although he’s not going to race at the Valley, I just thought a trip away would suit and I was pretty confident his run style would suit it there as well. He had a nice time out in front down the straight.”
As for barrier trials generally, he offered a refreshing insight as to how he found those to be his biggest challenge, on the training front, when he first arrived.
“The trials themselves are run extremely quickly,” he said. “I knew the races would be, but they go very quick in the trials, quicker than race pace, really, which made it difficult for new horses and difficult for me as a new trainer to really gauge where they were at.
“In that situation I think you’ve got to put a lot of confidence into how your horse is and where they’re at in the ratings when you’re going to the races with them. That was a learning curve, for sure, particularly a couple of big-price winners we had because they weren’t trialling great but I was quite happy with the horse, so that was interesting.”
Eustace, even at 32, is an experienced horseman and no stranger to big-race successes, nor to the pressures that come with training to high expectations. He does, after all, number a Melbourne Cup and a Cox Plate from his six years in a champion trainer partnership with Ciaron Maher in Australia.

But that was then and he knows that the glories of the past count for little in the now of Hong Kong. One thing that has also challenged him is “Just how quickly things do move, and the swell of support to and from”,” that gives Hong Kong its reputation for being cutthroat and fickle.
“If things are going well and if they’re not, well, it works both ways,” he said. “I don’t think anyone is prepared for it particularly when they arrive: I mean it’s spoken about a lot but you don’t really expect it. That’s working for me at the moment and hopefully that will continue.”
He is taking nothing for granted, though. Every day is a chance to learn, improve, and understand what are the right things for his horses and owners, and in that process, he has a knowledgeable family support network.
His father James Eustace was a smart trainer in England and his son Harry now holds the licence at the Newmarket yard, while his uncle David Oughton is well-known to Hong Kong fans from his time at Sha Tin as the trainer of the city’s tough Group 1-winning globe-trotter, Cape Of Good Hope.
“Dad reads a race very well,” Eustace said. “We talk all the time after the races and same with Harry. I wouldn’t say we bounce ideas off but we’re always watching and in that regard we’re very close, so it’s great that they obviously understand it extra well. It’s more than just viewing a result, win or lose, and they totally understand how difficult it is and so do I, so to have that is wonderful.
“I speak to my uncle David quite a lot too, and he’s a big help. It’s probably just revitalised him, watching it again, which is nice. That’s a great thing to be able to share.”
Victor The Winner is up against the superstar sprinter Ka Ying Rising but Eustace hopes his new charge will enjoy being in a small field of eight and through that will rediscover some of his old confidence.
The trainer might allow himself to feel some healthy, quiet confidence too, that as the season’s halfway mark approaches, he has laid a good foundation. If so, he knows well the caveat that one must never take a single thing for granted in Hong Kong.
“I’m just very grateful for the support,” he said. “I think it will just be a little bit quiet the next couple of months with the new horses only having their first trials next week, but I think it’s a nice enough team now to have a strong end to the season.
“I hope we can kick on now,” he added ∎