Breeding powerhouse Coolmore is hoping to foster further interest from Hong Kong owners after selling the BMW Hong Kong Derby (2,000m) winner for the second straight year.

After Massive Sovereign won last year’s Derby, having begun his career under Aidan O’Brien in Ireland, Cap Ferrat pulled off a superb upset at Sha Tin on Sunday following 13 starts for Chris Waller in Australia.

“It’s absolutely massive for us. It’s a big deal,” Mick Flanagan, Coolmore’s head of international sales, told the Post. “To be able to go to Sha Tin [on Sunday] having sold last year’s Derby winner and to see the owners celebrating, it’s just unbelievable.

“We sold 10 horses to Hong Kong last year, which is a lot, and we’d like to do the same again this year, if not more. We’re open for business.”

While impeccably bred three-time Group One winner Russian Emperor, who is by Galileo out of Atlantic Jewel, is another Coolmore product sold to Hong Kong in recent years, there are still those who are sceptical when the breeding giant opts to offload.

“The owners here might say ‘why would these guys sell these horses?’, but it’s a stallion operation, and if they’re not going to be stallions, we need to sell them,” Flanagan said.

“Basically, if they’re not going to be on the stallion brochure, we’re more than happy to sell them. Coolmore predominantly is a stallion farm and the main driver of the business is stallion revenue.

“There’s a big farming business behind it, a lot of land and a lot of families employed. We’re still a commercial operation, so we have to sell anything that isn’t going to make it as a stallion.”

Flanagan confirmed interest in Coolmore three-year-olds who could target the 2026 Hong Kong Derby as four-year-olds would ramp up around June.

“I think the picture is clearer post Royal Ascot. We start to decipher what will make the stallion barn and what we maybe need to move onto different jurisdictions,” he said.

“Hong Kong is a great market for both the northern and southern hemisphere, but in the northern hemisphere we have Saudi [Arabia], Bahrain, Dubai and the [United] States as well, so when our horses come up for sale it’s pretty hot competition.

“We’re lucky as salesmen that we have a good product to sell – they’re the best bred, they’re the best looking and they’re very sound.”

Cap Ferrat cops 19-point hit

A year after Massive Sovereign took a massive 25-point hit for his Derby success, Cap Ferrat has been slugged a sizeable 19 points for his triumph in the Classic Series finale.

While Massive Sovereign was lifted to a rating of 107 following his Derby win, Cap Ferrat now sits on a mark of 102 – the same as Romantic Warrior after his triumph in the race and one point less than Voyage Bubble.

Runner-up My Wish moved to a rating of 101 after receiving a four-point hike for his effort.

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Derby attracts record crowd

Cap Ferrat’s victory was witnessed by a record Derby Day crowd of 61,681 at Sha Tin, with an unprecedented 8,567 of those on course travelling from the mainland to witness Hong Kong’s most prestigious race.

Those numbers came just days after the Jockey Club formalised a partnership with China Travel Service Hong Kong (CTS), something chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges labelled “very significant”.

A continuation of the club’s efforts to promote tourism in the Greater Bay Area, the memorandum of understanding it signed with CTS will “jointly promote horse racing tourism by including Happy Valley, Sha Tin and Conghua racecourses into CTS travel itineraries”.

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