Beyond 2000: Pain-free Purton nears history

Zac Purton is closing in on a milestone no jockey in Hong Kong racing history has ever reached, and he couldn’t look more comfortable doing it.

Two masterful winning rides aboard Invictus Dragon and Smart Avenue at Sha Tin on Saturday took the eight-time Hong Kong champion to 1,990 wins – leaving him just 10 shy of 2,000, a number that exists in uncharted territory for the sport. The Hong Kong Jockey Club wasted no time marking the occasion, firing up a countdown on the Sha Tin big screen after his 1,990th, with further celebrations planned as the landmark approaches.

Yet less than three years ago, Purton was certain he wouldn’t even be riding by now. “I definitely am not going to be riding in two years’ time,” he told Asian Racing Report in October 2022, approaching age 40 and ground down by a right hip that had put him in agony for three years straight.

So much for that statement. Since then he has passed Douglas Whyte’s all-time wins record and questions on retirement have been replaced by talk about Ka Ying Rising. And for now, Purton says of the approaching milestone: “It’s not as if I’m under any pressure or time limit to get it done. It’s gonna happen.” He says it with the easy calm of a man who has stopped counting the wins.

So, what has changed? The hip that reduced one of racing’s most stylish riders to a limping, wincing shadow – still winning championships, but barely enjoying them, and seriously contemplating walking away from it all – has, for now at least, relented. It didn’t go quietly and for three years the grind never stopped: a week made up of five days of physio and two days of riding, multiple treatments running concurrently – anything he could do to maintain his high standards and get through the Hong Kong grind.

“Whatever you could get done, I was getting done,” he says.

None of it seemed to work. By the end of last season, the pain had become so unbearable he asked the Club if he could sit out the final meetings altogether. The request was knocked back and Purton rode on. But when the off-season finally came, he took full advantage – and something shifted.

“It was either all the treatment that I got finally helped it, or after a period of time it seemed to release and soften and settle,” he says. “For the first time in three years, it’s like the headache just went away. And I came back and it’s been good ever since.”

The relief Purton has found is more than physical, it is psychological. When he was flagging retirement in 2022, the hip wasn’t just slowing him down – it was robbing him of any sense of joy.

“I was at a point where I just couldn’t handle it anymore,” he admits. “I was done with it.

“I was walking with a limp and a hobble and it was just horrible. Just to be able to walk freely is a massive relief.”

This season the statistics tell their own story. Purton has 112 winners this season – more than double nearest rival Hugh Bowman’s 55 – and has booted home 18 winners from his last 10 meetings. A replay of Saturday’s double, he joked, is something to show apprentice riders. “Give the young kids something to watch,” he said with a laugh. The rides were vintage Purton: patient, precise and utterly ruthless in the finish.

Now, with a pain-free body and the ride on the world’s best sprinter in Ka Ying Rising – five years old, on a 20-race winning streak, and showing no signs of stopping – Purton has found reasons to keep going that he couldn’t have imagined three years ago.

“I continue to get support, which helps,” he says, “and I’m riding probably the best horse in the world as well. That certainly makes things very enjoyable.”

Win number 2,000 is coming – Purton is making no bold proclamations on when the milestone will be reached. “It’s just a matter of time,” he says.

The only question is which Sha Tin or Happy Valley meeting it happens at, and who is lucky enough to be there when it does.

 

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓