A family day for the Kwoks, and a quiet tribute to Sasa

The Kwok family celebrated a double on their own Sa Sa Ladies’ Purse day, Beauty Award’s win carrying a deeper meaning before Beauty Bolt completed the brace in the last.

Beauty Award, a John Size-trained four-year-old, defied a betting drift to win first-up. He is out of Sasa, a Group 1-placed mare named after the family’s cosmetics brand, yesterday’s race-day sponsor. The Kwoks bought her in Australia and raced her in Hong Kong as Beauty Glow.

“We actually bought her as a Derby horse. She was rated 85 when she raced in Hong Kong,” Patrick Kwok Ho-chuen said.

“She was a good horse. She gave birth to this horse and very sadly passed away. So he’s a special horse, this one. We’re very happy he’s won for us.”

The Tony Cruz-trained Beauty Bolt closed the day out after a HK$800,000 all-up rolled onto him, dragging his odds to 2.2 before the market corrected and he started third favorite at 5.8. Andrea Atzeni was surprised to see the short price as he walked into the mounting yard, unaware of the all-up.

Beauty Bolt ran third in the Hong Kong Classic Mile earlier this year but failed to see out the trip in the Derby, finishing second last. He ended a marathon campaign second to Ka Ying Attack in the Reunification Cup, and Atzeni believes the horse is better suited to 1400m and 1600m.

“They had to go the four-year-old route with him,” Atzeni said. “That’s what you do when you buy those sort of horses – some can handle it, but some might take a bit of time and never make it to that level.

“Now you don’t have to worry about the four-year-old series. He’s in his lane and you can just focus on what he does.”

Beauty Bolt beat two leading contenders for this season’s Four-year-old Classic Series, Hot Delight (third) and Mr Incredible (fourth).

Atzeni finished the day with a treble and a win in the jockey challenge took him to 12 wins from the season’s first 18 meetings, giving him an outside chance of an International Jockeys’ Championship berth next month.

Hong Kong Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges thanked the Kwoks for their commitment to the sport and what has become one of Hong Kong’s most iconic racedays.

“We would like to thank the sponsors. Despite a significantly challenging time, they’ve stuck with us and they were lucky enough to win two races,” he said. “Happy owners, happy sponsors.”

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓