ZAC PURTON BY THE NUMBERS

By Graham Potter | Thursday, April 11, 2024

Zac Purton has become the second jockey to ride 1700 or more winners in Hong Kong, passing that landmark figure by riding a treble at Happy Valley on Wednesday night.

Now in his seventeenth season in Hong Kong, Purton is comfortably on his way to his seventh Hong Kong Jockey’s Premiership and is also closing in on a ninth century of winners during a season.

His total for this season currently stands at 91. There are twenty-five meetings left to go this season.

Seven of those ton-up seasons (from 2016/17 to 2022/23) have come in a row and so Purton will extend that already awesome sequence.

At the rate Purton is travelling, Douglas Whyte’s all-time record of 1813 wins the saddle in Hong Kong could come into view in the second half of next season but, realistically, closing down a 112-win gap is still a stiff challenge for the forty-one year old.

Not that Purton is slowing down. Last season Purton broke the record for most wins in a season, setting a new mark at 179 winners.

Purton has had 9,854 rides, has saluted in 1,701 races at a strike rate of 17.26% since moving to Hong Kong for the 2007/08 season.

While Purton stands alone well above his current rivals in Hong Kong, in another sense, his statistics also put the achievements of champion jockey Douglas Whyte in respectful perspective.

Now retired and having moved into training, Whyte is no less than a thirteen-time Hong Kong Jockey’s Premiership winner whose 1813 wins came from 12,269 rides at a winning strike rate of 14.78%.

On the training front, John Moore still leads the all-time trainer’s winners list in Hong Kong with 1,735 winners. John Size follows with a total of 1,534 while Tony Cruz became the third trainer to join the 1500 club when Beauty Joy won the Group 2 Chairman’s Trophy last Sunday.

Cruz’s contribution to Hong Kong racing has been phenomenal as he also rode 946 winners in Hong Kong where he is a six-time Premiership winning jockey.

Champions all!

More articles