Happy Lucky Dragon Win | A sense of timing, not money, required to buy a piece of Derby glory
When Designs On Rome – a horse no-one wanted as a yearling – settled down to fight out Sunday’s BMW Hong Kong Derby with Able Friend – a royally bred blueblood from an exclusive yearling sale – it was racing, the great leveller, at its finest.
When Designs On Rome – a horse no-one wanted as a yearling – settled down to fight out Sunday’s BMW Hong Kong Derby with Able Friend – a royally bred blueblood from an exclusive yearling sale – it was racing, the great leveller, at its finest.
But it was also an illustration of what might be the changing face of buying horses for Hong Kong’s favourite race and the edge an early arrival can give an import.
It was one of racing’s all-time greatest one-on-one or age-group battles, bringing to mind for many Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star in the 1986 Cox Plate...
...the 1996 Australian Derby fought out by Octagonal, Saintly and Filante...
...or Toronado versus Dawn Approach in the St James’s Palace Stakes last year.
From as early as the start of this season these two horses seemed head and shoulders above their four-year-old class. Classic duels in the Hong Kong Classic Mile and Hong Kong Classic Cup set the scene for Sunday’s slug fest at Sha Tin.
Designs On Rome’s former trainer, Pat Flynn, was trackside to tell the story as only an Irishman can, on how he came to own “the best horse I will ever train” – and how he paid only €10,500 (HK$114,000) for a yearling that was described as “weak and feminine” by some, because he liked the look of it. He re-sold the horse little over a year later for nearly 100 times that amount.
I think what I will do in the future is not buy these expensive horses and hope for the best. I’ll look to buy horses and bring them here as three-year-olds and then bring them through the grades.
Able Friend, however – well, even a non-racing person couldn’t help but be impressed at his physique. He is an imposing chestnut who you look at and say “now, that’s a racehorse” and he has a pedigree page that makes auctioneers drool. He was an in-demand lot at the 2011 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale in Sydney, knocked down to Moore’s son George for A$550,000 (HK$3.9 million).
