Jerry Chau Chun-lok and Luke Ferraris will join captain Vincent Ho Chak-yiu on the Hong Kong Jockey Club's first Shergar Cup team, with the lineup revealed at Sha Tin on Saturday ahead of the popular team competition at Ascot on August 8.
The Jockey Club's decision to field a team in its own right — and to add the six-race jockeys' challenge to its World Pool commingled betting portfolio for the first time — lifts the 25th running of the event to another level, according to Ascot's director of racing and public affairs Nick Smith.
"This is the culmination of taking this event to a newer level from an international perspective," Smith told The Standard at Sha Tin on Saturday. "For the Hong Kong Jockey Club to actually put up a team themselves, engage in World Pool with the event, give the event exposure globally — quite frankly, I thought I'd never see the day where I'm in Hong Kong as part of this ceremony. It's been fantastic."
Ho's captaincy was announced in February, but Saturday's confirmation of his teammates adds the in-form Chau, who holds a commanding lead in the Tony Cruz Award for Hong Kong's leading homegrown rider, while South African Ferraris completes a team that replaces the Asia lineup which won the trophy last year.
Ho has fond memories of the fixture, having won the Shergar Cup Mile aboard Power Of Darkness on debut in 2019 as part of the victorious Rest of the World team.
That team will be captained this year by Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Jamie Melham, and the international flavor of the day — staged during Hong Kong's off-season — extends to some familiar names for local fans.
"The last team to come together will be the Great Britain and Ireland team, because they have retainers, but we have a Rest of the World team and Jamie Melham's captaining that," Smith said. "We've got Yutaka Take in that team, and Suraj Narredu, who rode for India last year. He was very popular, so it's coming together. Christophe Lemaire is going to be captain of Europe."
Take, Japan's 57-year-old riding legend, and Lemaire, the French ace who has dominated big-race riding in Japan for a decade, are both well known to Sha Tin racegoers, while Narredu captained Asia to victory on his competition debut 12 months ago.
The Shergar Cup format sees four teams of three jockeys accumulate points across six handicaps, and Smith said a key innovation has been the use of an algorithm — replacing a random draw — to allocate rides once declarations are made.
"The declarations come out on the Thursday and James Willoughby puts the horses in what he believes to be the betting order, and then an algorithm allocates each jockey a number one and a number 10 in the betting and everything in between," Smith said.
"The idea is that every jockey gets a balanced book, good or bad, and the net result within the last few years is that the competition has gone down to the last race, which of course is what you want to see. Prior to that, when you have a random draw, you can end up bringing someone in from the other side of the world and giving them absolutely nothing that's a fancy.
"The event used to be a two-team event and that lends itself to a dead rubber very quickly, but with four teams, with a betting algorithm putting the jockeys on, it means you've got a good chance at the end of the day."
