Xtension To Romantic Warrior: J-Mac’s Still Learning On The Hong Kong Curve

IT’S BEEN a big week for James McDonald, navigating his schedule in the demanding centre of the media spotlight. Wednesday: join the bright lights and thrills of the International Jockeys’ Championship (IJC) at Happy Valley. Friday: pick up the ‘World’s Best Jockey’ award for a second time. And Sunday? Chase history riding Romantic Warrior.

In-between all that, he had the trackwork riding, the networking, the chasing future rides, the routine race prep, and the promotional demands expected of a superstar jockey during Hong Kong racing’s biggest week of the year.  

Late afternoon Tuesday at Tai Kwun – the former police station and jail, now a museum and leisure space – in Hong Kong’s Central district, McDonald and his 11 IJC rivals each slid into a blazer of deep blue hue with red and white trim – sharp, with a hint of Henley Regatta about the look – and stood beside a near life-size image of themselves printed on a board. All around and between them, journalists, photographers, and film crews jostled to ask questions or snap portraits.

It was all a long way from a quiet moment on May 6, 2012. A fresh-faced McDonald was standing outside the Sha Tin weighing room alone, dressed in the green silks of Xtension, looking out towards the track’s big screen as the runners went behind the gates for the race preceding the big one, the G1 Champions Mile. He was 20 years old, not much more than a boy, but that day he would add hefty weight to the words that Xtension’s trainer John Moore had been sharing with anyone willing to listen.

“He has soft hands, great hands, the best I’ve seen in a young rider in a long while: this boy can go right to the top,” the former champion trainer would say with a nodded tilt of his head that enforced the certainty of his opinion.

Moore, the son of the great Australian champion jockey George Moore, and older brother to another champion rider, Gary Moore, was a tough judge as a trainer when it came to appraising a jockey’s strengths and weaknesses. Reputation counted for little.

Xtension had won the previous year’s Champions Mile under no less a jockey than the exceptional Darren Beadman, but a career-ending injury suffered in a Sha Tin barrier trial meant a new partner had to be found for the follow-up attempt. With the veteran champion out of the game, Moore had no hesitation in selecting a jockey he believed could one day be a racing great, too.

Moore was right that day. McDonald went in cold, without another ride on the card, but he was alert at the break, rousting his mount forward to settle one-back on the fence. There he stayed until the 250m mark when he switched out, moved off heels, and began a busy drive to the wire that secured a 17/1 win by half a length, his first Hong Kong major.

McDonald was a prodigious talent. By that Sunday afternoon in 2012, the New Zealander had already been champion jockey twice and champion apprentice four times in his homeland and was starting to make his name in Australia.

The previous December, still in his teens, he had shown up in Hong Kong and taken to Happy Valley’s quirks without a bother on IJC night. He won one of that Wednesday evening’s four IJC races and ran second in another, both on Moore-trained horses.

“I was still looking for the dairy farm!” McDonald said with a grin.

“I had great ambitions, of course, and I’ve always strived to be very good at my craft and I’ve learned along the way. Xtension was a very early part of a process of learning everything I can, and like anything you don’t get everything right at the same time. I came to Hong Kong and found it far too hard, left, and then got another opportunity to come back.

“I suppose Xtension was the toe that dipped in the water, so to speak. It was a huge learning experience coming here in those days and I was pretty young, to be fair.”

McDonald, now 32, is one of the big drawcards wherever he goes. ‘J-Mac’ to many, is an established star of the sport with an international profile: 104 Group 1 wins on the board including a Melbourne Cup, Golden Slipper, King’s Stand Stakes, a Yasuda Kinen, and three Cox Plates in a row; then there are eight Sydney premierships to go with the New Zealand premierships he nailed as a teenager; and, of course, his current association with two of the world’s best racehorses, the Australian-trained mare Via Sistina and Hong Kong’s own Romantic Warrior.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club would love to lure him to the city full-time, and there has been much conjecture about when and if that might happen. For now, they will have to be content that McDonald is in the middle of a one-month licence to ride in Hong Kong that will end on December 22. He has 10 wins at a strike rate of 21.2 per cent.

“I’ve loved it,” he said of his second short licence to ride in the city in as many seasons. “Family have loved it. I’ve had really good success straight off the bat so that always helps.”

The bustle of the Tai Kwun media event shuffled on around him as he thought back to the “great ambitions” he had at the time he nailed that first Hong Kong major with Xtension and reflected on the role that riding in Hong Kong has played and still plays in developing his attributes as a jockey.

“I tell you what, even now, I always find coming back here that I learn so much,” he said. “I’m a lot sharper when I go back to Australia: you’re extremely competitive because you’re fighting for everything tooth and nail and the races are so hard to win, so you actually cherish every winner you get here because it’s a tough environment. I think you sharpen up your skills very quickly here or you don’t survive. It’s a very competitive place. Not just on the track, it’s off the track as well.

“When you come here you have to be pretty well-equipped because you get fed to the wolves pretty quickly, it’s a big learning curve. That’s why I think you’ve got to come here at a pretty mature age because it’s tough.”

He looked across to Hong Kong’s seven-time champion Zac Purton, standing a few feet away being interviewed himself, and nodded in his direction as he spoke.

“Zac didn’t start like that,” he said. “Obviously, he’s the king dog now but there were people beyond him to start with, so he’s learnt his way through and that’s what everyone has to do.”

McDonald’s progress from rare prodigy to ranking among the world’s best has taken a turn or two, but learning from his experiences is a theme he repeats. That development included receiving an 18-month suspension for betting on a horse he rode and then coming back stronger than before.

It has also included riding for Godolphin in Australia, under trainer John O’Shea, and for that country’s standout trainer, fellow Kiwi sensation Chris Waller.

But it is his association with Hong Kong’s latest hero, Romantic Warrior, that has captured the attention of racing’s fans globally. He was not the seven-year-old’s original pilot, of course, at first he filled in when Karis Teetan suffered a health issue, but he won both his call-ups in the G2 Jockey Club Cup and the gelding’s first Hong Kong Cup.

When Teetan lost favour with trainer Danny Shum and owner Peter Lau following two defeats early in 2022, McDonald was asked to take the ride again and guided the gelding to win the second of his QEII Cups. He has been in the saddle for seven of Romantic Warrior’s last eight starts, for six wins, including those famous triumphs in Australia and Japan.

McDonald’s admiration and affection were obvious as he talked about the son of Acclamation, whose personality and manner of racing seem to make him ‘bomb proof’ and equipped for any challenge that might come his way.

“He is,” said McDonald enthusiastically. “He’s exactly like that, he’s very straightforward, very self-explanatory: jumps well, travels well, quickens well.

“He’s probably one of the most intelligent horses, and you can tell by what he does at home in trackwork, he’s very switched on and when he travels he knows what to do to conserve energy at certain times. He is a phenomenal-minded horse, so that’s why he’s travelled so well. And he’s tough, he settles in really quickly, he adapts very fast and nothing fazes him so he’s the perfect horse for that.”

J-Mac is a key part of the Romantic Warrior team and has been included in discussions as to where the horse might run after the Hong Kong Cup. It seemed nothing had been entirely locked in but McDonald liked the idea mooted by Shum that the G1 Jebel Hatta in Dubai was an option leading into the G1 Saudi Cup on dirt in February, leaving options for dirt or turf races on the Dubai World Cup card in early April.

“We had a meeting but they’ve done their research and they know what they’re doing. I’m definitely agreeing with keeping open the turf option though,” he said.

But the immediate focus was a record-setting third Hong Kong Cup, a win that would fulfil Lau’s ambition to own the world’s all-time top money earner. On that front, McDonald was “confident” the champ was primed to win the Cup again in a few days’ time, despite strong opposition.

McDonald’s schedule has him back home in Australia by Christmas but his connection to Hong Kong is strong, and every success he can achieve with Romantic Warrior only strengthens it further. There has been talk that once he passes Damien Oliver’s record of 125 Group 1 wins in Australia, he would make the move full-time.

“I suppose so. I’m not too sure,” he said.

With family to consider, as well as commitments to trainers, owners and the good horses he rides in Sydney, things can never be quite that cut and dried.

“It might be sooner, it might be after, but I’m not too sure,” he added. “I just enjoy competing and I enjoy what I do now, so unless something changes … one thing I do know, I really enjoy riding in Hong Kong and competing, I think it’s very competitive and it puts a little spark in your belly every time you come here.” ∎

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