John Size said many years ago that the Hong Kong trainers’ championship race was “leader biased” so you have to wonder if perhaps he dropped that line in front of Pierre Ng during the latter’s time as his assistant trainer.
Ng has thrown his cards on the table, in two seasons as a trainer in his own right.
He began fast in his freshman campaign to be near the pace for the first half of the season before fading, then went a step further to clear out and lead by as many as 16 wins midseason last term before being nabbed on the line for the title by Francis Lui.
We can probably assume that Ng’s plan is to show a clean pair of heels again and his string has been busy at the trials to support that idea. Does that set him up as the one to beat in season three? Well, yes and no.
Going close to not getting the result seems a positive but also carries some heavy baggage – many of the horses in the yard will be the same ones that left it all out on the track as Ng pushed for the title, leaving them high in the handicap in addition to being well raced.
As a comparison, Frankie Lor produced an exceptional 65 wins in his first two seasons to run second in each to Size, but crashed in season three with just 44 wins, rebuilding afterwards to claim his title in season five.
So, Ng’s ability to recycle his team is the key to being able to turn up and be a contender again and more than two thirds of his yard – currently overcrowded with 72 names - is made up of horses who were there last season.
What does look assured for Ng, though, is a part to play in major races with exciting Galaxy Patch heading the team but Mugen will first fly the Hong Kong flag in the Sprinters Stakes in Tokyo on September 29.
But, if Ng has an issue with recycling his yard, title winner Francis Lui is in even worse shape.
The HKJC site lists 69 horses in Lui’s yard with more than 80 per cent of them inmates from last season. In fairness, there are quite a few with little exposure – just one or two starts – but there is a big chunk of the yard who are up in the handicap and will battle to get wins after the successful exertions of last campaign.
The other question on Lui's season comes with the great stable warrior, Golden Sixty.
His last run in the Champions Mile in April was anticipated as his final race but he remains in training, suggesting that connections might have the stage of the HK Mile as his final day.
So, where are we looking when we talk about the trainers championship this season?
Size turned in one of his worst seasons last campaign in terms of wins, producing 50 victories to finish seventh, but has still won 5 of the last 9 titles and 12 from his 23 seasons at Sha Tin (that should be 13 after losing one on a countback of minor placings after he and Caspar Fownes dead-heated, but that's a subject for another day).
For our money, Size starts every season as a 2.0 bet to win the championship but he also shapes to play a big role in the top level races this season.
The usual high leading players like Tony Cruz, Caspar Fownes and Danny Shum will again be to the fore, while Lor is coming off another “dip” season and is likely to bounce back and David Hayes had his best season in 2023-24 since returning to Hong Kong and will be looking to replicate or improve on that.
As always, a new trainer brings some interest but there has been a change in attitude with recent additions to the roster. New trainers, and expatriates in particular, were once keen to get an early winner and make a strong mark but Jamie Richards, two years ago, recast the mould when he didn't have a runner until October and Mark Newnham last year had a relatively quiet start too.
Both produced their best later in the term and David Eustace has made no secret of the fact that this will be his plan, too.
Like other new expats, Eustace has had to wrestle with the quandary of starting in Hong Kong - the heat and humidity of August and September discourage trainers from asking too much of their horses in training but they still want them to be competitively fit. Those questions become more manageable as the season progresses and the weather changes.
As the term starts, he has 27 horses - fewer than Richards or Newnham but more than Size when he famously won the title in his debut season more than twenty years ago - and almost evenly divided between transfers from other yards and new horses.
The new ones will take time to be ready so Eustace, at this stage, has about 15 “renovator’s delights” to work with in the opening weeks.
He has forecast Swift Ascend might be his first runner late in September and that horse does look one of his better prospects to win a race early.
Things can change quickly as he acquires more horses but, given the ammunition he has now, a pass mark for Eustace looks to be around 25 wins.
Fans will be looking for improvement from last season’s debutants, Cody Mo and Newnham and history suggests a better year two is likely, though not assured.
In this table, you can see that only Sean Woods, Richard Gibson, Michael Freedman, Jimmy Ting and Richards posted their best result in year one, though Freedman departed very early in his second year.
For his part, Richards is still unexposed and will also be looking to use the experience gained in his first two seasons to climb the ladder after acceptable but middling returns to date.
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