Five-time champion jockey Zac Purton has committed his future to Hong Kong, confirming he will remain in the city for at least the 2023-24 season.

While admitting he and his family “pretty much had our bags packed” as recently as a couple of weeks ago, the assurances of Jockey Club officials ensured Purton will continue to light up Sha Tin and Happy Valley for the foreseeable future.

“At the end of the day, it just came down to the discussions we had with the Jockey Club. Whether they were going to be more flexible than they had been, whether it was going to be easier to base myself in Australia,” Purton said.

“Certainly, at one stage, I had one foot out the door, and the other foot was nearly with it. I suppose you could say at the eleventh hour, the club threw a little bit of a Hail Mary, and I caught the ball.

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“What they’re going to do – and this is not a Zac Purton rule, this is going to be a rule for all the jockeys – is they’re going to give us more freedom to travel. They realise if they’re going to attract the best jockeys from around the world, they need to be able to compete at the bigger carnivals.

“If that means we miss a Hong Kong race meeting here and there, they’ll accept that. But although I’m able to travel more, Hong Kong will still be my priority. It just allows me to travel more frequently when the opportunities arise.”

While a raft of injuries – including those he suffered in the horror fall in the 2021 Hong Kong Sprint – left Purton seriously considering retirement, he has not put a time frame on when he might hang up his whip as he continues to manage his health.

“Eight months ago, I didn’t think I was going to be able to continue beyond this season. My body was telling me it’d had enough,” Purton said.

“At that stage I didn’t feel like I had an option, but as time has gone on, and with the physio and the treatment I’ve been able to receive, my body has turned the corner. It’s still not where I’d like it to be. I still have to maintain the physio sessions every two or three days to be able to continue to ride.

“I have to stay on top of it, but I feel like I’m able to continue. If I’m able to continue to patch myself up and ride at the level I’m required to ride at, I don’t know what the time frame on retirement will be.”

Purton admits the lure of Australia was strong after a torrid few years of Covid-19 restrictions in Hong Kong. His recent success in Sydney, with three Group One wins in the space of a month, and the family time spent Down Under only increased that pull, as well as speculation surrounding his future.

“The lifestyle in Australia and being closer to family was really starting to pull us away from Hong Kong, especially with what’s been going on here over the past few years. I actually thought I was going,” Purton said.

“Going back to Australia and receiving the support I had – and people in Australia in general reaching out and asking me to come back – did start to make me think about it a little bit more.

“But then it was like the racing community in Hong Kong and the general public here started to feel that, and the support I was receiving from Hong Kong ended up becoming 10 fold from the owners, the trainers and the fans here.

“I’ve had constant messages every single day asking me to stay. It makes us feel very wanted here in Hong Kong, and the family is settled.

“We love Hong Kong, we always have, and we’ve always felt at home here. I read one of [Hugh] Bowman’s comments where he said he feels refreshed since he’s moved to Hong Kong, and I remembered that was one of the things I found when I first moved here. I didn’t realise it at the time, but in Australia, I felt very burnt out.”

There is also the small matter of the enormous financial benefit of being in Hong Kong, and the fact that in Sunday’s Chairman’s Sprint Prize winner Lucky Sweynesse, Purton has a horse he can chase a good slice of those riches with.

“They’re putting the prize money up another 8 per cent next season, as well as adding all the extra money into the bigger races. Financially – like I’ve always said, and I suppose I have to listen to the words I’ve spoken – you’re just so much better off being here than in Australia,” Purton said.

“Tax comes into that as well, but the amount of prize money we race for week in, week out here compared to other parts of the world is unrivalled, really, and it’s hard to walk away from that.

“As well as that, you get a horse like Lucky Sweynesse come along, who’s just continued to improve in the past few months. I now look forward to what he’s going to do in the future.

“My wife [Nicole] obviously likes it here and when we sat down and weighed it all up, we felt like we were comfortable remaining in Hong Kong. I look forward to putting my head down, getting back to work and getting on with it.”