Hong Kong is famous for its astronomical turnover. It boasts the highest per-race prize money in the world. But it is an accolade that carries no monetary value that perhaps means most of all to its participants.
Next time Zac Purton appears on a video interview from home, check the mantelpiece behind him. It is not the Group 1 trophies or international accolades that take pride of place – it is the trophies for his eight jockeys' championships. You cannot mention Douglas Whyte's name without the precursor "13-time champion". It is the first line of every introduction, a permanent prefix, and Whyte would have it no other way.
Purton will make it nine this season – that race is already run. But the trainers' championship shapes as perhaps the closest in Hong Kong history, and with 17 meetings remaining before the Season Finale at Happy Valley on July 15, the tension is building.
Danny Shum Chap-shing fired in a treble on Wednesday night to shoot two clear at the top with 54 – Mark Newnham (52), Caspar Fownes (51), David Hayes (48) and Francis Lui Kin-wai (47) are within striking distance. In sixth, 13-time champion John Size has 45. Nobody in this town is willing to rule him out.
So why does the championship carry such weight in a city that runs on turnover and prize money? Maybe it is an antidote to the money-machine the system is. For all the pressure and the grind, it is not the bank balance Whyte and Purton boast about – OK, Zac does sometimes – it is the championships. There is something about pure sporting achievement that cuts through everything else.
It is made stronger by Hong Kong's unique, six-week summer break. The defined start and end to the season, along with the set rosters of jockeys and trainers that return each September, give it a "Premier League" feel. There is even a relegation battle of sorts, with strugglers near the bottom of the standings hoping for one more chance.
Some will say publicly that the title is not on their mind. Size, in particular, bats away the incessant questions about his championship hopes – but that has more to do with his training philosophy: prepare the horses, results take care of themselves – than any indifference to what it means to stand on stage at the finale with the trophy above your head.
Ask Caspar Fownes what it means. The four-time champion has enlisted the ultimate gun-for-hire in Joao Moreira for a late-season push at his tile five. He won the 2013-14 championship in a final-day showdown with Size, and was joined on stage by his father Lawrie, a training legend in his own right. Lawrie, with ailing health, was gone nine months later.
Ask Dennis Yip Chor-hong, and anybody who was there the night he clinched the championship in the final race – Ben So Tik-hung steering Flying Elite to victory in front of a capacity crowd at the Valley. In more than 20 years of covering top-level sport, that was the most thrilling spontaneous outpouring of hometown pride this columnist has witnessed.
Let's hope for a similar showstopper at the Season Finale this year – also at Happy Valley – on July 15.
Between now and then you will hear a few trainers try to downplay it. But if it comes down to the final race, check their pulse rate beforehand – and ask them afterwards, win or lose, what it really means to be crowned champion of Hong Kong.
