Caspar Fownes did not merely move to the brink of a fifth trainers' title on Wednesday night – he stamped it with everything that makes him box office: three winners under the Happy Valley lights, a six-win cushion restored, and a war cry aimed squarely at nearest rival Danny Shum Chap-shing.
"You wanted a fight, I'll give you a fight!" came the roar after Dancing Classes hit back after a Shum double. Fownes’ theatrics are what people remember, and they deceive. Strip away the fist pumps, hooting and hollering and what remains is a piece of training as clever as any this city has produced.
Let’s look at the raw material. Fownes heads to Sha Tin on Sunday with 69 winners and not one earned at Group level – he has failed even to saddle a Group 1 runner this term. His most prolific horse has visited the winner's circle just three times. Heading into Wednesday, half of his 70-box allotment – 35 horses – carried a rating of 60 or lower. The stables around him house Derby heroes and established stars. His rivals fire bullets; he has been reloading with buckshot.
Titles are usually won by improving types who reel off four or five victories on the way up. Fownes has assembled his the hard way, brick by unglamorous brick, mostly midweek: 46 of the 69 have come at Happy Valley, a career-best return at the city circuit by a wide margin – where, fittingly, the curtain falls on July 15.
The prize money ladder exposes the gulf in ammunition. Top of the table for winners, Fownes ranks a distant eighth for earnings – HK$84.5 million against Shum's HK$137.5 million, David Hayes' HK$133 million and Mark Newnham's HK$130.5 million.
Recruiting Joao Moreira was the inspired call of the season. Twenty seven wins at a 17 percent clip this season for Fownes, a striking number decided by narrow margins – precisely the man to turn a photo in favor of a moderate galloper with nothing left up its sleeve.
Wednesday's treble was the campaign distilled. The trio scored from marks of 46, 58 and 63, and none belongs in anyone's blackbook for next term. Jumbo Blessing had gone six starts without troubling the judge. Forza Toro was zero from 10 until he made every post a winner in Spanish silks in the Eight to Glory. Dancing Classics arrived off finishes of last, eighth and 12th of 14 – blinkers applied, Moreira rolled the dice from gate 10, and bang.
None of this belittles the pursuers. Shum's revival deserves applause of its own. Romantic Warrior accounted for six of his 63 wins, and nursing the eight-year-old back from leg surgery was a genuine feat of horsemanship in itself. A year ago his season unraveled after a flying start – 29 winners from his opening 251 runners, then 11 from the following 259. There has been no repeat.
Newnham, a third season trainer who lifted a Derby and a Group 1 with gallopers developed from scratch, gives every impression of settling near the summit for good – in Australia, he was in effect always operating at Hong Kong scale against Sydney’s mega stables. Hayes leaned on Ka Ying Rising for seven of his wins at home and may have shouldered the heaviest pressure of anybody.
But the season is the showman's. Horse racing, Fownes keeps reminding us through every celebration, is meant to be enjoyed, whether the contest is a Class Five or a Group 1. If he can hang on through the next two meetings then title number five – pieced together from castoffs, sealed with a roar – will sit above the other four.
