With the awards season upon us and the Jockey Club’s secret society of vote givers about to dish out their gongs, it’s time for the real end-of-season awards – the Happy Lucky Dragon Win awards for 2013-14.
While the Jockey Club awards are steeped in prestige and seriousness, we strive to reward absurdity, stupidity and ineptitude in all of its forms, and basically highlight things that make us laugh.
We call them “the Andys”, in tribute to trainer Andy Leung Ting-wah, who has provided plenty of ammunition for this blog with his outrageous outfits and seemingly LSD-induced thinking.
First, for what it’s worth, here are our actual HKJC award winners:
Champion sprinter: Lucky Nine, just, over Sterling City.
Champion miler: Glorious Days, again, just, over Blazing Speed.
Champion middle distance horse: Designs On Rome
Champion stayer: Dominant.
Horse of the Year: Designs On Rome.
Champion griffin will be decided after the officials decide what this season’s definition of a griffin is, and may not be awarded because the actual “griffins” are terrible.
That’s the horse awards decided by a judging panel, while the other champion horse award is black and white – Divine Ten is most improved horse courtesy of jumping 59 rating points from 52 to 111.
Which brings us to our first “Andy” – and it’s one the great Andy himself would know a thing or two about.
Most profitable stable transfer
As a punter, there’s nothing better than finding an untapped talent languishing in Class Five for a struggling stable. It then sprouts wings upon arrival at a new yard and ends up winning four or five straight.
Last season it was Solar Great going up 46 points after moving from Almond Lee to David Hall; the season before Easy Gold jumped 37 points with five wins for Richard Gibson after starting with Me Tsui Yu-sak.
This season’s candidates aren’t as clear, but rookie trainers Chris So Wai-yin and Benno Yung Tin-pang have obviously been beneficiaries of stable transfers to which they have managed to add ratings points. Benno did best with Step High, another Almond Lee refugee that won four and climbed 30 points from 35 to 65.
The Andy is given to both trainers – the new handler grinning gleefully, the old trainer wearing a paper bag over his head.
Best feud
Two seasons ago Douglas Whyte and Tony Millard traded barbs in the SCMP over the jockey’s handling of Ambitious Dragon in the Champions Mile, while last year Whyte and Zac Purton pointed fingers and called each other various names on the track and in the media.
This season’s best feud was more like a cold war, although the normally mute Me Tsui did say plenty in the Chinese press after he gave Purton the flick off Divine Ten when he was beaten as HK$14 favourite on New Year’s Day.
As far as unofficial suspensions go, Tsui lacked the staying power of some of his colleagues, relenting after just 147 days and calling on Purton to ride in May.
Winner: Me gets the award because firstly, he burst out of his normally subdued persona to charge into the stewards’ room demanding justice, and secondly, because he couldn’t stick and fell back in love with Purton within a few months.
Honourable mention: To John Moore for bumping Purton off Military Attack after a sustained campaign in the press.
Kudos to Millard for sticking to his word when it came to giving Gerald Mosse a suspension for a bad ride. The South African gave the Frenchman more than a year off before he won on Ambitious Champion in March.
“When I give them a suspension, I make sure it is a good one,” Millard laughed, and when asked how Mosse met Millard’s criteria of never using a jockey that has more money than him, Millard gave one of the quotes of the year: “Ahhh, you see Gerald DID have more money than me, but that was before he got married three times.”
Most embarrassing HKJC gaffe
Past awards have included innocent punters being trampled at the handing out of free hats, the Jockey Club freezing the betting accounts of pro-punters the day before a massive Triple Trio and last season’s memorable “horses jump from the wrong gates” debacle.
This season an amazing array of idiocy vies for top honour.
Nominees include: GPS timing system Trakus being utilised for nothing more than a picture of a track on the infield big screen; correct weight being called by stewards before an intended protest could be lodged; an official handing the alcohol licence application in late and leaving the Sha Tin members without booze for a few weeks; and a Jockey Club employee selling zilpaterol-tainted feed to a fish farm.
Winner: We have to go with “fish-gate”, just for the image of incredibly muscular and fit looking fish trying to bust out of a New Territories fish farm.
Best Hong Kong horse name
There’s been a disappointing and distinct lack of Happys, Luckys, Dragons or Wins, or a combination of those staples, in this season’s names.
Who knows how the smutty Clever Beaver (by Shaft) got through the rude-name checkpoint at Sports Road, but some points for weirdness go to Peniaphobia and Packing Llaregyb.
Winner: Packing Llaregyb, by sire Dylan Thomas, and named after a town in a play by a poet of the same name (Dylan Thomas, that is, in case you haven’t heard of him).
Honourable mentions: To Unbeatable Guts and the late Fiery Four By Four, whose owners were just asking for it by including two fours in the name.
