There’s no prize money for winning the Hong Kong trainers’ championship. Not a cent. It’s all sporting pride and glory – every trainer in this town wants it on the CV, wants their name up on that board, wants to be called champion.
And here’s the other thing people forget: the championship isn’t decided by who trains the best horses. A Group 1 win is worth exactly the same as a Class 5 victory. Unlike Australia and other countries, a Hong Kong trainer is limited to how many horses they can train – that means every horse in a stable matters. That means the structure of a stable becomes the deciding factor in a championship chase, and in a year as tight as this one, it could be the whole ball game.
There are 26 meetings left and just seven wins separate the top five. Mark Newnham leads on 48, Caspar Fownes is right there on 47, then Danny Shum, David Hayes and Francis Lui all within range. John Size is 13 off the pace in sixth.
Let’s start with Size and work up.
I know what Size can do – he is defending champion and has 13 titles – nobody in Hong Kong puts winners on the board in bunches the way he can, and you can never truly rule him out. But he might have to train two winners for every one Newnham and Fownes saddle from here, and that’s almost impossible to sustain over 26 meetings. He’s also got seven fresh horses just out of quarantine that probably won’t race this season, and nine rated above 80 with few options. I think you have to rule him out.
Francis Lui is on 41 wins and his team is racing well, but his roster is too top-heavy. Thirteen horses rated above 80 is too many, because there aren’t enough races for them. He’s got an exciting young horse in Hot Delight on 81, but the likes of Copartner Prance and Chancheng Glory are stuck at a mark where they’re running into superstars every start. Rule Francis out too.
Danny Shum has the best-balanced roster of the chasing pack, and that’s not a small thing. Sixty-seven horses, only one fresh arrival, five above 80, six in Class 5 – he’s got a full team working and plenty of range. And of course he’s got Romantic Warrior, who will likely start a dominant favourite in two races. But looking through his list, I’m not sure he’s got enough promising types coming through who can win two or three in a run home. You need a handful of horses going bang-bang-bang late in the season to really press, and I can’t see them there.
Hayes knows how to win a premiership – he’s done it before – but looking at his roster, I think he may have already fired his best bullets. He has had more runners than any other trainer and is short on the promising young types you need coming through in the run home. He needs a big meeting or two to get back in it, and I can’t see where it’s coming from.
That leaves Newnham and Fownes. Both have had outstanding seasons and I’m prepared to say it: this is a two-trainer race.
The key won’t be the top of either stable. It’ll be the bottom – and that’s where I think Caspar has the edge.
Class 5 is for Hong Kong’s lowest-rated horses, rated 40 and below. There’s no prestige in winning one, but over the next 26 meetings there’s going to be plenty on the line in them. Caspar has been stronger than Mark in Class 5 this season – he has had 10 Class 5 winners to Mark’s three. There are more Class 5 races towards the end of the season, and the schedule for the next 15 meetings contains 19 Class 5 contests. Nineteen chances that count exactly the same as a Group 1 in the championship.
Fownes has six Class 5 horses and every one of them looks ready to win – and a couple of them have room to win more than once in the grade. Newnham has only three rated 40 or less, and once they win one they could be straight out of the grade. That’s a massive structural difference with two months to go.
Also, Caspar has 71 horses in his stable compared to Mark’s 66 – five horses is a big difference.
Mark’s been brilliant and the one advantage he has is stable transfers – they are his great hope. Ace has won and could win two more. Ace War has already won two-from-two but could win another two. Ace Power hasn’t won yet but could. And then there is the Class 5 horse Soaring Bronco – he has won already but could win again. If Mark can get six wins out of those four stable transfers, which is possible, then that gives him the chance to win.
So what is the magic number? The number of wins it takes to win. The number is going to be lower than usual – it is a top heavy championship. The least it has taken to win the title in the last ten years was 67 – the most was Size’s record haul of 94 in 2016/17. I think 68 wins would be enough and if you told Mark now that he will have 20 wins from the final 26 meetings, I think he would take it.
Newnham has said that the title will come down to the final meeting. If it does, he has one more factor in his favour right now – he has more seconds than Fownes (36 to 32) – which is a tie-breaker, and more thirds (40 to 30), which is the second tie-breaker if both trainers are equal.
This championship could go either way – but if there was betting on it today Caspar would be favourite. Firstly, he has Joao Moreira as stable jockey – and he has already had an impact – but he also has more Class 5 horses and I think that matters.
This is one of the the great things about Hong Kong racing: even when the good horses have finished for the season, there is still excitement – and this year it is going to be the trainers’ championship that keeps us entertained right up until the season finale on July 15 at Happy Valley.
There’s no prize money for winning this title, and it might just be Hong Kong’s most unheralded horses – the ones down in Class 5 – that decide who takes it home. ∎
