Purton beating the market on favorites
Zac Purton has ridden the favorite in more than a third of Hong Kong’s races this season, and he is converting those opportunities better than the market expected.
Purton has been aboard the favorite in 13 of the season’s 36 races — 36.1 percent of all races and comfortably more than any other jockey. Nobody else has ridden more than three favorites. Those 13 rides produced six wins, a second and a third.
Those market elects carried a combined market expectation of 4.48 wins, leaving Purton 1.52 wins above expectation.
Nor is Ka Ying Rising’s overwhelming share of the betting doing the heavy lifting. The champion accounted for 97.5 percent of the Win pool when he won on opening day, contributing almost one expected win on its own.
Take Ka Ying Rising out and Purton has still ridden 12 favorites in the other 35 races, winning five from a combined market expectation of just 3.51 wins.
Few would have had Me Tsui Yu-sak on their early-season bingo card, but four meetings into the campaign, the veteran trainer has people paying attention.
At the same stage last season, Tsui was still searching for his first winner. Through the first four meetings of 2025-26, he had 15 runners for no wins, no seconds and three thirds. This season, he has made a markedly stronger start: 24 runners producing two wins, a second and a third.
Another notable difference is the size of his stable. Tsui had 47 individual horses race for him last season; his current roster stands at 59.
The betting market has started to react too. Telecom Power returns in the first race today after being backed from $7.10 into $3.20 favorite two weeks ago before finishing fourth after a luckless run, while the money was right last week when Pope Cody landed a plunge.
The favorite in the 1,000-meter race will have an ugly-looking recent statistic to overcome: the Jockey Club’s barrier data shows a 0-for-14 record when the rail is in the “C” position.
That is the record of favorites over the minimum trip when the rail is in the second-widest placement. Only two of those 14 favorites have even made the frame.
It looks damning until you widen the sample. The Club’s barrier statistics only stretch back to the 2024-25 season but, if you go back to April 2008, favorites have won 45 of 156 races over the same course and distance, a strike rate of 28.9 percent, while another 39 finished second or third.
The current drought is still extreme. Using the long-term 28.9 percent win rate as a benchmark, the chance of 14 favorites losing in succession is about 0.85 percent.
But 14 races are not enough to establish a “C-course curse”, particularly when the longer history looks very different.
