Happy Lucky Dragon Win | How do you solve a problem like Moreira?
What are we going to do with Joao? Short of sports psychology and putting rear vision mirrors on his runners – how do we stop the Brazilian being slapped with careless riding suspensions? And worst of all – could the constant breaches of Rule 100 (1), and spiraling fines that go along with them, cause the Magic Man to pull a vanishing act on Hong Kong?
What are we going to do with Joao? Short of sports psychology and putting rear vision mirrors on his runners – how do we stop the Brazilian being slapped with careless riding suspensions? And worst of all – could the constant breaches of Rule 100 (1), and spiraling fines that go along with them, cause the Magic Man to pull a vanishing act on Hong Kong?
And what is actually more astonishing: Joao Moreira’s astronomical win strike rate? Or his suspension strike rate? Or the fact that he can keep winning despite the disruption of spending half his time here on the sidelines. He has now been outed five times by stewards – a total of 15 meetings – for careless riding since arriving in October last year.
Of course, a massive win tally and trouble with stewards for knocking people down aren’t always unrelated events – often the former is a precursor to the latter, as it was on Wednesday.
He certainly isn’t as ruthless as some we have seen when it comes to winning at all costs. For one thing, he certainly shouldn’t be, as the name of the charge implies, careless. For a start, it’s getting too costly for him to not care. Under the new structure of careless riding penalties for repeat offenders, Moreira copped a HK$60,000 fine to go along with his three-meeting holiday for shaving off a bit close when crossing to lead on eventual winner Bundle Of Joy at Happy Valley on Wednesday.
That’s a fair dent in expenses when taking a lay-off in Cebu or Phuket, so even if you want to enjoy your suspension on a sun-drenched beach, $60,000 buys a lot of Pina Coladas and foot rubs while you are there.
Moreira poured his heart out back in December after a day when he had a double but got time again. He even questioned whether he was suited to riding in the tight confines of Sha Tin and Happy Valley, where fields pack into turns tighter than passengers into a peak hour train on the Tsuen Wan MTR line.
