The breather following a long racing season is a short one. It’s been only about seven weeks since the end of the 2020-21 Hong Kong season, and already, on Sunday at Sha Tin, it is on to 2021-22.
A 10-race card, first post 1 a.m. Eastern, starts off the new racing year with some things similar, others different since live races last were run in Hong Kong.
A positive change – fans in the stands. Attendance last season was strictly capped because of COVID-19, but with the virus relatively controlled right now in Hong Kong, as many as 15,000 could attend opening day at Sha Tin. A year ago, only a few hundred were permitted at the racetrack for the season’s first program, and many cards were run with fewer than 1,000 people ontrack.
The standard Hong Kong race week applies: Sunday afternoons at Sha Tin, Wednesday nights at Happy Valley, the so-called City Track. Laid out on the edge of the densest urban expanse on Hong Kong Island yet nestled at the base of towering Mount Cameron, Happy Valley is the smaller, less-standard racecourse. One of its two turns is wider than the other, the oval undulating and with a relatively short homestretch. Sha Tin, site of all Hong Kong’s top-class racing, is a flat, regular oval with a homestretch of more than 500 meters, plenty of time for true talent to win out.
The highest-class races of the season come Dec. 12 this year, four international Group 1s ranging in distance from six furlongs to 1 1/2 miles. One of those races, the Hong Kong Mile, is the major early-season goal for Hong Kong’s best horse, Golden Sixty, the 2020-21 Hong Kong Horse of the Year, a winner of 14 straight races. Three more victories and Golden Sixty will tie Silent Witness’s Hong Kong record of 17 in a row, though Golden Sixty is not expected to see action until the Jockey Club Mile on Nov. 21. His trainer, Francis Lui Kin-wai, recently floated the possibility of sending Golden Sixty abroad for the first time, for the 2022 Yasuda Kinen in Japan. But any travel is COVID-dependent, and Golden Sixty, his connections say, will go no farther than Japan next year.
Outside Golden Sixty, the jurisdiction is looking for stars right now, with even the sprint division, so often loaded with talent, somewhat light last season. Softness at the top levels bears no relation to purse structure. Sunday’s is the first of 88 race meetings that will offer a total of just less than $188 million in prize money. The purses are outstanding by any standards, and the majority of Hong Kong races attract full fields made especially competitive by Hong Kong’s handicap system of race planning.
Joao Moreira ran away from Zac Purton to win the 2020-21 riding title, and those two, from all appearances, will run away in the standings again this season. Caspar Fownes, who had the best season of a long Hong Kong career, was leading trainer last term, outlasting John Size, and both outfits will be in the thick of things again.
Sunday’s program (live video and wagering are available at DRFBets.com) is headlined by race 5, the Class 1 HKSAR Chief Executive’s Cup Handicap over 1,200 meters. Amazing Star is top-rated at 113 but will struggle to make a serious impression carrying high weight, 133 pounds. Lucky Patch, rated 108, rates a stronger chance and gets a five-pound weight break thanks to the presence of apprentice rider Jerry Chau, though he must overcome an outside draw in post 10.
Much lower in the ratings, at 90, is Naboo Attack, who makes just his second start in Hong Kong. Trained by David Hayes, whose stable is expected to have a productive season, Naboo Attack won a Class 2 over 1,200 meters at Sha Tin last May in his local debut, then was a veterinarian’s scratch from an intended start in June and only now gets back to racing.