Two races down in the world’s most prestigious, most valuable international jockeys’ challenge, and, to the obvious delight of local fans who like nothing better than to see their own triumph, Hong Kong riders were ahead of the game at Happy Valley last Wednesday.
Vincent Ho, whose career has blossomed under the influence of sprint superstar Golden City, won the first leg of four on Handsome Rebel, trained by recent Aussie import Jamie Richards, beating his compatriot Matthew Chadwick, and Derek Leung quickly made it two out of two with a last stride success on Win Win Fighter for trainer Frankie Lor.
Then reality set in, and the international experience of Tom Marquand and Silvestre de Sousa shone through. Their wins in the last two legs of the competition had the bean counters rushing to their calculators, for the sequence meant that each race had been won by a different jockey, and it was only on countback that de Sousa and Marquand shared the spoils.
With points for just the first three places, neither de Sousa nor Marquand had been on the score sheet by halfway, but counting even farther back, they came to the fore based on two fourth places, pushing Ho and Leung into a share of third place. So tight was the finish that Jamie Kah, representing Australia and riding in Hong Kong for the first time, would have leaped from fifth to first place had she prevailed on Red Lion in the closing qualifier instead of going down by a short head to De Sousa’s mount and the favourite Red Lion.
Instead, Marquand, representing Britain, and De Sousa, riding for Hong Kong on the basis of having secured a short term licence, split the prize of HS$700,000 (Aed330,000), a rich return for a night’s work that had some of the world’s biggest names trailing in their wake. De Sousa was winning the event for the second time, while Marquand stepped up narrowly from his second place in the event the year before.
De Sousa is undertaking his fourth extended stint in Hong Kong, His last, in 2019, coincided with his winning the international jockeys’ challenge and brought him 44 winners in total, including the Group 1 Hong Kong Cup. With Joe Moreira taking leave of absence, he will be going all out to make the most of every opportunity.
Zac Purton remains the jockey every other in Hong Kong has to catch, yet even he cannot go without the horse, as was amply demonstrated in the jockeys’ challenge event, where he finished plum last without a point to his name. Despite all the best efforts of the Hong Kong Jockey Club to even out the distribution of mounts that are drawn by lots, there remains a degree of uncertainty and possible imbalance in the allocation of rides, especially as the races are framed for less able horses so as to guarantee full fields of 12 runners.
As befits their position as one and two in the 2022 Longines World’s Best Jockey award, James McDonald and Ryan Moore dead heated, but for ninth place, while close on their heels Hollie Doyle, Britain’s most successful female rider, narrowly escaped Purton’s fate, with four points. At least Doyle was able to share better than most the success of Marquand, her husband.
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