HONG KONG'S CHAMPIONS DAY GROUP 1 CLEANSWEEP HOPES FOILED BY THE JAPANESE RUNNER WIN BRIGHT

By Darren Winningham | Sunday, April 28, 2019

A resounding message was sent to racehorse owners and trainers all around the world in December when Hong Kong horses and trainers made it a clean sweep of the featured four Group One races on the card on LONGINES International Races race-day for the first time in history with the bulk of the HK $93 million in prizemoney remaining at home.

Fast forward to April 2019 – FWD Champions Day with HK $58 million on prizemoney on offer. The question was whether Hong Kong runners could match the heights of those December results.

Certainly they appeared to have the ammunition to do so.

The Chairman’s Sprint was the first race to be contested.

The locally trained and heavily backed second favourite Beat The Clock settled just off the pace under Joao Moreira and proved too strong for fellow Hong Kong local Rattan, ridden by Chad Schofield, in the final chase to the line after the latter had looked the likely winner halfway up the straight.

The Australian sprinter Santa Ana Lane was sent out as a short-priced favourite for this event. Starting at $1.75 with most Australian bookmakers, the multiple Group One-winner settled back early from the outside gate and was never really in the hunt in an on-pace dominated affair, eventually running into fourth place.

Strike 1 to Hong Kong!

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The FWD Group One Champions Mile was never expected to be a serious contest and the race went exactly to script, with superstar Beauty Generation cruising home to score in effortless fashion in what looked to be nothing more than a track gallop.

Jockey Zac Purton said, “John wanted me to give him a little push today. It’s hard to say how much more he’s got there but he did his job and that’s all you can do”.

John Moore was questioned about the possibility of taking Beauty Generation to Japan. He responded by saying: “I would like to go to Japan but it’s the owner’s call. It was a facile win today. I don’t think it took much out of him. I still think he has got a lot left in the tank”.

Strike 2 to Hong Kong!

Were we heading for another Group 1 clean-sweep celebration party for Hong Kong runners?

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And so it was that we came to the last Group 1 on the card - the FWD Group 1 QEII Cup with prizemoney of HK $24 million - with the clean-sweep possibility for Hong Kong still very much in play.

Zac Purton has won just about every major race at Sha Tin but this was the one that still eluded him. He got the chance to add that to the collection riding the Tony Cruz trained Exultant but the race result produced a boil-over with the win going to the way of Japanese outsider Win Bright ($48).

The favourite Exultant took runner-up honours, while Lys Gracieux, another Japanese runner, was third.

This meant that the race has yet again eluded the trophy shelf of Purton and that Win Bright had spoilt the party in terms of any Hong Kong Group 1 clean-sweep - but it took a course record to achieve that with Win Bright winning in a time of 1.58:81.

Win Bright’s trainer Yoshihiro Hatakeyama wasted no time making his intentions clear.

“I would like to come back in December if he can run in the Hong Kong International Races,” he said.

“I hope the horse can become more powerful and develop more. It’s been a great honour to come here and win such a great race on the world stage.”

Win Bright was Hatakeyama’s first Hong Kong runner and he became the fifth Japanese horse to win the HK$24 million race, after Eishin Preston in 2002 and 2003, Rulership in 2012 and Neorealism in 2017.

Strike 3 to Japan.

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