8 minute read
Sixty is HK’s new Beauty
David Morgan profiles Golden Sixty, Hong Kong’s new super star, the winner of 15 races, including the Group 1 Hong Kong Mile in December and the Group 1 Stewards’ Cup in January
HONG KONG has enjoyed a golden age on the track since Silent Witness lifted a city floored by the 2003 SARS epidemic: bona fide champions Sacred Kingdom, Viva Pataca, Vengeance Of Rain, Ambitious Dragon, Able Friend, Designs On Rome and Beauty Generation led a support cast of top-class talents that included the likes of Bullish Luck, Aerovelocity, Military Attack, Werther, Gold-Fun, Lucky Nine, Amber Sky, Rich Tapestry and plenty more besides.
This era of excellence coincided with booming turnover, which rocketed from about HK$60 billion in 2006 to HK$124.8 billion in 2019, as the production line of genuine Group 1 gallopers boosted Hong Kong racing’s international profile.
That kind of depth is missing at present, with the last couple of “Classic” crops failing to unearth more than one or two elite runners.
It was especially evident at the pandemic-affected Longines Hong Kong International Races: the Hong Kong Mile (G1) was the last roll of the dice for the diminished champion Beauty Generation, the Hong Kong Sprint (G1) had the weakest collection of home-produced Group 1 sprinters in recent memory, Mogul brushed off champion stayer Exultant in perhaps the poorest of Hong Kong Vases (G1), and, in the crown jewel, the Hong Kong Cup (G1), the invaders simply slammed the sub-standard local runners.
But, saving the day for his hometown, Golden Sixty’s 2l success in the Hong Kong Mile was emphatic. The worthy veteran Southern Legend could not answer his questioning acceleration, nor could Japan’s victor from the previous year Admire Mars, while Ballydoyle’s Breeders’ Cup Mile (G1) winner Order Of Australia was shrugged aside, as was the once imperious Beauty Generation.
The superior performance of Sha Tin’s latest hero – fluid, powerful, swift – was no surprise to those who had watched him ascend Hong Kong’s rigorous handicap grades: from a Class 4 debut success through 15 starts and 14 wins to Group 1 glory. His ever-present jockey Vincent Ho expected nothing less.
“I was pretty confident,” the rider says of the Francis Lui-trained five-year-old. “Once I jumped on him, I was even more confident. There’s something really special about horses like this, I’ve never been on another horse that can give you that sort of feeling – when you sit on him in the parade ring and you already know he’s ready to race and he wants to race. It definitely wasn’t an easy task, but he’s still young compared to horses like Beauty Generation and he’s got the ability.”
The John Moore-trained milers Beauty Generation and Able Friend set the quantifiable benchmark in Hong Kong, sharing the circuit’s all-time highest international rating of 127. Ho believes Golden Sixty could at least match that exalted pair.
“Oh, definitely,” he asserts, “I’ve never ridden those other horses, but I think he’s perhaps even on a level above, from what I feel: I think he’s definitely one of them at least, if not better. He could go on to be one of Hong Kong’s all-time greats, for sure.”
A star’s make-up
Golden Sixty took his first breath in Australia, but the gelding’s pedigree is a tantalising mix of top drawer North American bloodlines with proven European quality.
His sire Medaglia D’Oro needs little introduction: a multiple Grade 1 winner Stateside, the stallion’s progeny includes Rachel Alexandra and Songbird, as well as the conspicuous talent, Talismanic.
Golden Sixty’s dam Gaudeamus – a $60,000 Keeneland September purchase – won the Group 2 Debutante Stakes in Ireland for Jim Bolger before her relocation to the southern hemisphere. She shares her second dam, the E. P. Taylor-bred Konafa, with the likes of Bosra Sham, Hector Protector and Shanghai.
The New Zealand operations Riversley Park and Enigma Farm together purchased Golden Sixty at the 2017 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale for A$120,000.
The long view was always Hong Kong and the brown youngster with the distinctive white snip was prepared for the New Zealand Bloodstock Ready To Run Sale.
There Lui posted a clinching bid of NZ$300,000 and put him into training in the country with Graham Richardson. Three barrier trials later, Golden Sixty was shipped to Sha Tin to race in the gold-capped white and blue-spotted silks of Stanley Chan.
“His gallop and breeze-up was impressive,” recalls the 61-year-old Lui.
The handler is enjoying late-career success beyond anything he has experienced before, having stepped out of the shadows in 2017 with Lucky Bubbles’ Chairman’s Sprint Prize (G1) win.
Golden Sixty’s achievements are a cut above that as only the second horse to have won all three races in the Hong Kong Classic Series, including the biggest of all domestic races, the BMW Hong Kong Derby (G1) last March. “This horse is a gift, a dream horse,” Lui adds.
But the emerging champion has his foibles. After last season’s Hong Kong Classic Cup – the Classic Series’ middle leg – the victor backed away from the unsaddling area, ears flat, neck stretched, prompting Ho to instruct the groom to lead his mount away without the standard post-race pose beneath the victory arch.
Golden Sixty took his Hong Kong winning record to 15 from 16 starts in January’s Group 1 Stewards’ Cup
“I think he was still immature,” Ho says. “He tended to kick a bit last season; he was quite cranky after winning but this season he’s fine. He’s not grumpy like that anymore – maybe the summer break helped him mature and relax.”
Lui adds: “He’s easy to train but you have to be careful inside his box, that’s his own place. He will bite or kick, but actually he will show you that you have to be careful, he will warn you.”
Golden Sixty was exemplary in the Hong Kong Mile. When Ho moved his mount wide around the final turn it was done with a silky slickness that did not falter through a sprint to the line; he ran the final 400m in a sharp 22.05s.
“He has a really good action that other horses don’t have,” says Ho. “The way he changes legs, it’s like changing gears on a sports car, it’s just instant and it’s so smooth. He’s got that and not many horses do – few have the athleticism he has.”
Flying the flag
The Hong Kong Derby (G1) is the one race every Hong Kong participant wants to win and in 2020 the enterprising Blake Shinn had a shock victory all but nailed as the field swung off the final turn.
The rider had looped 289-1 shot Playa Del Puente from last to first with half a mile to run and flipped a muddling race on its head.
Golden Sixty, a $1.70 “good thing” that day, was eight horses wide into the home run, with 6l to find.
“When the front horse ran away off a slow pace, I had to be worried,” admits Lui as he recalls that bright spring afternoon.
Ho, on the other hand, was unruffled. The rider allowed Golden Sixty to find his balance before picking up his stick, then asked for a sprint. If a crowd had been present, as in pre-COVID times, it would have been mesmerised: still 3l down with a furlong to go; 100m left and a length to find; then a neck in front when it mattered.
It was a jaw-dropping effort, blitzing the final 400m in 21.83s for a race record time of 2m 00.15s.
Hong Kong’s Derby – restricted to four-year-olds due to Hong Kong’s need to import horses – is its keystone race; every owner covets it and the big players scour the globe with cheque books open for a likely candidate. It is the race that drives the annual regeneration of the two-track circuit’s 1,300 horses.
While this season’s four-year-olds jostle through the Classic Mile, Classic Cup and Derby to be the next great hope, Golden Sixty is slated to run a near-parallel programme – he took January’s mile Group 1 Stewards’ Cup by a head from Southern Legend again. There is an anticipated return to 1m2f in February’s Hong Kong Gold Cup (G1), and it will be the first time since that incredible Hong Kong Derby performance that he has run over the longer trip.
“I’m happy for him to go back to 2000m in February. He handled the longer distance in the Derby and ran a good time,” says Ho.
Concern about how good any racehorse might be is unimportant for a community dealing with the aftermath of widespread protests, the passing of the freedom-stealing National Security Law and the mass arrests of pro-democracy figures, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic: Golden Sixty is not Silent Witness.
But life continues in its altered state, and the Hong Kong Jockey Club needs a worldclass standard-bearer to maintain interest and drive a product which last season saw commingling from overseas pools increase by 25.3 per cent on the previous season. Successes in the Stewards’ Cup and Gold Cup would match the rare feat of the similarly brilliant Ambitious Dragon, the most versatile of all recent Hong Kong champions. It would also set up the fascinating question of whether Golden Sixty will take in the Champions Mile or the QEII Cup on Champions Day in April?
The hope in Hong Kong has to be that, by then, the current promising crop of four-year-olds will have passed through the crucible of the Classic Series with enough aplomb to challenge the champion-elect and restore depth to the pool.
And, just maybe, the fans will be back on course too, with Golden Sixty offering a city in need a little something to cheer for.
Golden Sixty, the son of Medaglia D’Oro, came home a head ahead of Southern Legend (centre) in the mile Stewards’ Cup and is due to step back up to 1m2f in the Hong Kong Gold Cup in February
