Willie Leung calls for increased diversity in Hong Kong racing
Prominent agent Willie Leung has called for more diversity in the Hong Kong trainers and jockeys’ roster, a move which would provide more choice for owners and lessen the stranglehold at the top of the respective premierships.
The Magus Equine principal, who acted for five Hong Kong trainers at Tuesday’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale, also urged the Jockey Club to increase prize-money to help offset the rising costs imposed on the jurisdiction’s owners.
Leung’s public statement comes as suggestions filter through that the collective cohort of Hong Kong owners aren’t as willing to splash big dollars on horses as perhaps they may have been in the recent past, demonstrating that affluent investors in the sport are not immune to the current economic times.
“The (extra) competition benefits the owner. They have more choices [of who will train or ride their horses] and the competition will help the racing product,” Leung says.
“You can’t just have one or two big stables who train for the big owners.
“Racing should be a fair game for everybody and if you’ve got a nice horse, then they can compete at all different levels, which is why I think we need more choices for the owners.
“More diversity will also help attract racegoers and perhaps encourage them to bet a little bit more.”
Kiwi Jamie Richards has trained two winners so far early in his second season in Hong Kong while Pierre Ng, son of retired trainer Peter, made a big impression in his maiden season in 2022-23, preparing 41 winners.
Mark Newnham and Cody Mo were also granted trainers’ licences ahead of the current season, but in recent times Tony Millard, Peter Ho, David Ferraris, Paul O’Sullivan and Richard Gibson have all departed.
Joao Moreira and Zac Purton have dominated the jockeys’ premiership while the addition of Hugh Bowman and Brenton Avdulla has helped the depth of the riding ranks.
Luring a James McDonald or a Ryan Moore on a full-time basis, as unlikely as it is, would certainly add the “star power” Leung believes the local industry requires.
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One of those new Hong Kong trainers, Mark Newnham, prepared his first winner at Happy Valley on Wednesday night and he expects that to just be the start, predicting the second half of his maiden season at Sha Tin to be when we start to see the makings of his stable.
Starting out in Hong Kong is not easy, as Jamie Richards found out last season, and Newnham has had 14 runners so far.
“That’s the thing, when you’re starting training somewhere else, your transfer horses are generally transferred for a reason, they’re not in good form, otherwise they wouldn’t be transferring, but I have got enough there to work with until the new horses kick in,” Newnham told us from the Inglis Ready2Race Sale this week.
“I have had quite a few horses arrive already and a few more to come from here [Australia], so I would say by Christmas I’ll probably have 50 in the stable and of that there’ll probably be 30 who haven’t raced in Hong Kong, so we’ll have a fairly new team.
“If we can squeeze a win or two out of the transfer horses before Christmas, then I’d expect most of the new horses to get up and racing in the New Year.”
Newnham’s first Hong Kong winner, Happy Hero (Pierro), won a Class 5 race. The five-year-old was first-up for the stable after ten unplaced runs for rival trainer Dennis Yip.
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Drill for oil where it’s been found before.
It’s a common phrase and it also seems to apply to the bloodstock world where buyers are happy to purchase horses from vendors they’ve had success from in the past and, anecdotally, it’s even more so the case at the Australasian two-year-old breeze-up sales compared to other formats.
The breeze-up sale preparers and vendors who enjoy the most success are often those who have forged long-earned reputations for churning out quality horses.
Tal Nolen epitomises that concept, while his long-time understudy Peter Moffatt is also starting to make waves, and Warwick Farm trainer Robert Quinn, through the Valiant Stud draft, has also started to receive repeat business.
Leading WA owner Bob Peters bought Pleasure Cruise (Justify) for $110,000 at last year’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale, the gelding going on to win his first two starts in September for trainer Takahide Ikenushi, and on Tuesday Peters Investments was back again, this time buying a filly by Coolmore’s champion first season sire for $220,000 and a colt by Pierro for $100,000.
Signed for under the Byerley Bloodstock banner, both two-year-olds were educated by Quinn.
“There are a number of reasons why particular vendors have proven to be very effective at this format. One, they have committed a huge amount of time and effort to the format, they become very familiar with the sales process, and in the case of a number of our less-experienced vendors, the lack of familiarity with the sales process has been a factor in not being as effective in selling horses,” a frank Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch said on Tuesday evening.
“That is something we’ve got to be conscious of and work harder on in subsequent years. You can’t take for granted the nuances of the sales process and that everything is done to the highest standard possible and we’ve probably been caught out in a couple of instances there.
“If you reflect on this sales format and the results generated through it back six, seven, eight, nine and ten years ago, it wasn’t the lucrative sale format that it is now and that’s because those people who started doing it, five, six, eight, nine and ten years ago have committed to it and stuck with it. They are the people who have reaped the dividends of it over the past two to three years.
“It’s been a little bit more difficult for those people this year, but these are people who are churning out good horses year after year. We’re talking about a graduate of this sale 12 months ago [Verdad] running in the Guineas on Saturday and it’s entirely possible that he can run a bold race in the Guineas.
“That was an unheard of outcome six, seven, eight and nine years ago.”
To quote another well-worn saying, it can take 20 years to become an overnight success and, to borrow another one, there’s no doubt you learn faster when it’s your own money on the line.
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It’s a sample size of one but this breeding season fertility wise is going smoother than last year.
All across the eastern seaboard in 2022, the conception rate of the thoroughbred population dropped with a wet and cold winter and spring blamed for the drop.
However, this year appears to be running more smoothly for breeders.
Telemon Thoroughbreds’ Dan Fletcher, who stands Sidestep, Jungle Cat, The Odyssey and Sun City, reported yesterday: “The season’s been good, the stallions have been busy enough. Reproduction has become a little bit easier this year, so the season seems to be a little bit more forgiving and the mares are going in foal.”
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Trainers are known for forming a rapport with their owners, particularly a new one to the stable, but the soon-to-be Kembla Grange-based Mitch Beer went above and beyond this week.
We hear the smooth-talking Beer, known to enjoy a good time and renowned for his social media exploits, went from the Inglis complex on Monday to Parramatta to attend the university graduation ceremony of a child of one of his clients such was the bond they’d quickly formed.
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Talk of who will replace Vin Cox at the top of Godolphin in Australia also set tongues wagging. We put forward nine potential candidates – and not one of them on the list took exception to being associated with such a move to Sheikh Mohammed’s operation.
There were, we’re told, a few put out that they weren’t included in discussions and other Whatsapp chat groups were framing markets.
The wannabe bookies had Godolphin’s racing and bloodstock manager Jason Walsh as favourite.