GOLDEN SIXTY DETHRONES BEAUTY GENERATION IN STAKE-EARNINGS RACE

By Graham Potter | Sunday, April 24, 2022

Golden Sixty claimed his sixth Group 1 success and a second successive FWD Champions Mile at Sha Tin on Sunday, in the process taking his prize-money earnings in Hong Kong to HK$113 400, going past the earnings total of another Hong Kong great and previous earnings record holder, Beauty Generation.

It was a triple stable celebration in the FWD Champions Mile for trainer Francis Lui, who won the HK$20 million feature in 2020 with Southern Legend before following up with Golden Sixty last year.

Bullish Luck (2005 & 2006), Xtension (2011 & 2012) and Beauty Generation (2018 & 2019) are the only runners to have previously defended their FWD Champions Mile crown … and Lui has confirmed that Golden Sixty would now in all probability be given the chance to add his name to another elite list of top-class runners as he holds an entry for the Group 1 Yasuda Kinen in Japan on 5 June.

“Yes, he is entered already but of course, we have to see how he recovers and we also need to see the quarantine, whether we can go and how the arrangements work,” said Lui. “If everything is easy, we will go.”

Fairy King Prawn (2000) and Bullish Luck (2006) are the only two Hong Kong-trained horses to have won the Yasuda Kinen.

“He did his job, like last time,” said Lui post-race. “Last time he had a good draw and he followed the pace and this time he just did the same.

“He can really follow the pace now, not like before when he needed to sit behind to start and sometimes he got too far behind. He’s really stepping up.

“It’s not easy to have a horse who wins so many races. We are very happy. We all feel glory about this horse.

“He’s one in a lifetime.”

Golden Sixty has now won twenty-one out of his twenty-four starts in Hong Kong.

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