Hong Kong racing doesn’t have a hall of fame – it should. But here’s a way we could work out the first ballot nominees, who are its four definitive figures?
And here’s a fun way to imagine it – carved into the granite around Kowloon Peak. Four faces staring out over the city below – Hong Kong racing's Mount Rushmore. Who gets on?
Let's set the ground rules first. This is a monument to participants only – trainers, jockeys, horses. The officials, administrators and stewards who have shaped this sport deserve enormous credit, but their role is to lay the foundation. The performers are the ones we're here to watch. Same goes for owners — as crucial as they are, this stone belongs to the horses and the people who prepared and rode them.
Now, let’s get down to the debates.
There is one lock. One name so singular, so woven into the fabric of Hong Kong racing across not one but two chapters, that he practically carves himself in. Tony Cruz. The original homegrown legend. Part of the very first intake at the HKJC Apprentice Jockeys' School in 1972, Cruz became a six-time champion jockey riding 946 winners at home while finding time to head to Europe and win some of the biggest races there. Then he reinvented himself entirely as a trainer. His immaculate hair alone should be immortalized in granite. Tony Cruz is on the mountain.
Now for the other three. Logic suggests we fill a spot each for a trainer, a jockey and a horse.
John Size for trainer. This one isn't that complicated. Thirteen titles from 24 seasons in Hong Kong, breaking and re-breaking his own records along the way. He arrived in 2001 and won the championship in his first season, which almost never happens. He has finished in the top three in all but three of the seasons since. He quietly reshaped how horses are trained and prepared in this city, and he did it with a consistency that bordered on the mechanical. Size goes on ahead of George Moore – whose 11 titles is a staggering achievement – and his son John Moore. Their family legacy, combined, perhaps slightly diminishes their individual cases. Size gets the spot.
Jockey is where it gets interesting. Acknowledging yet another Moore – the seven-time champion Gary, whose Arc win and Hall of Fame career Zac Purton calls criminally underrated – we narrow it down to two names: Douglas Whyte and Purton. And here is where we leave it open. Whyte's 13 consecutive championships – unbroken – is the single most dominant stretch any jockey has produced in this city's history. Purton has eight titles, the all-time wins record and, crucially, time still on his side. He may yet make the argument unanswerable. But right now, if you had to pick one face for the mountain, whose would it be?
Which leaves the horse. And this, honestly, is the hardest question of all.
Silent Witness? There is a bronze statue of him at Sha Tin: seventeen consecutive wins and the horse who lifted Hong Kong during the dark days of SARS. Golden Sixty or Romantic Warrior? Romantic Warrior is the world's all-time prizemoney record holder - but Golden Sixty beat him head-to-head in their prime. Ka Ying Rising? Still running, still untouchable.
Here is our question for you: if only one horse gets carved into the stone, which one is it?
Cruz is on the mountain, so is Size - the other two spots deserve a decent debate.
