Callan twist to HKJC announcement as Ferraris accepts hometown challenge
The Hong Kong Jockey Club’s (HKJC) announcement on Monday that Luke Ferraris will be licensed to ride in Hong Kong next season is a welcome tonic for a stale jockey roster, but the fact that the bright young star of South African racing is the only new name speaks volumes.
According to sources, a recent closed meeting between trainers and club officials included a forthright sharing of views, during which the HKJC’s executive director of racing Andrew Harding admitted it was difficult to attract riders to the city. Covid concerns and restrictions may be one factor, while the continuing dominance of Joao Moreira and Zac Purton surely makes the proposition tougher for officials to sell; and Christophe Soumillon’s pointed remarks earlier this year about the lack of quality rides during his winter stint, which was hampered by suspensions, plus the fallout from Neil Callan’s harsh suspension at a controversial show cause hearing, cannot be discounted either.
Callan was not among the 22 jockeys licensed for the 2021-22 season but that strange saga continued even as the licensing committee was weighing up its options. The usual course of action would be for the HKJC to send a letter to each licensed jockey several weeks in advance of the committee meeting, asking them to apply for a new licence. Callan, sources said, did not receive that letter but was approached at trackwork last Friday by a senior HKJC executive and asked verbally if he would apply. The rider, whose wife and children are now in England, responded in the negative to the unconventional approach.
But, in an unusual twist, on Monday afternoon the HKJC made a belated formal written invitation to the jockey – with the licensing decision imminent – to apply before an extended deadline of this Friday, giving Callan an unexpected decision to make.
Hong Kong offers some of the best prize-money in the world, jockeys race twice a week and most live on-site at Sha Tin in HKJC-provided apartments: but they must also deal with intense scrutiny and the mental rigours of fighting for rides in a place where a scenario such as last weekend’s widespread consternation-turned-celebration in Britain at Adam Kirby being jocked off his Derby (Gr 1, 1m4f) ride, only to pick up the winner, would not have raised an eyebrow.
Whether he continues in Hong Kong or not, Callan has hacked out a niche in the ruthless environment, showing mental fortitude and an unvarnished approach that enabled him to forge a good career as a middle-ranking stalwart.
“Neil Callan has a very strong mentality and it helps. You need to be solid, to be a really tough person. Some jockeys make good results and some just run away,” said Umberto Rispoli, the Santa Anita-based former Italian champion who rode in Hong Kong from 2012 until December 2019.
Karis Teetan, meanwhile, has worked hard to advance since he arrived in 2014 and has established a position just behind the top two in the premiership but he, too, must deal with losing big-race mounts to the alpha pair.
“When I first started, I had to accept that if I was riding a good horse, Zac or Joao would take it in the big races,” he said. “It’s frustrating now if it happens but I still have to know this is how it goes because otherwise it holds you back. But it’s a hard pill to swallow if you’re taken off a good horse going into the big races.”
Teetan continues to battle whereas Rispoli left the city, dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities and lamenting a lack of loyalty among trainers and owners.
“The positive is that you build a strong mind in Hong Kong,” the Italian noted. “You learn how to deal with people: in Hong Kong there are no agents, so the jockey has to do it. You do that as best you can and try to pick up the best horse you can in the field: that is never easy because trainers will always look for Zac and Joao as priority, because they think they can do something different with the horses.”
One skill vital to success in Hong Kong is that of breaking quickly from the gates and finding a position. A rider must not only have a plan A but also a B, a C and perhaps a plan D for good measure.
“The brilliance of Purton and Moreira is their gate jumping and it just gives them that added extra option after 100 metres of racing of where they want to be in the run, it just gets them so many more options,” said trainer Richard Gibson. “That’s the only advice I give these new jockeys when they arrive and they all look at me rather strangely: ‘Don’t jump last out of the gates because people will mark you very quickly’.”
Rispoli acknowledged that learning to adapt to the racing pattern in Hong Kong has helped him in his career, yet he sees problems with the strict rules enforced, for example, if a jockey crosses in the opening stages before they are fully two lengths clear.
“There’s no other place in the world where you’re watching jockeys looking on the inside for at least 300 or 400 metres before they cross. It’s an easy way to get suspended. The problem is, you then lose business, you lose rides and someone else picks up your business, so that puts you in an awkward spot,” he said.
In the past few years, the long list of riders to have failed to secure a foothold in Hong Kong features Andrea Atzeni, who lasted only a few weeks, Damian Lane, Tom Queally, Colm O’Donoghue, Gavin Lerena and Mirco Demuro, while the jury is out on current incumbents including Blake Shinn, Ruan Maia, Vagner Borges and Antoine Hamelin.
The biggest names, like Ryan Moore, Hugh Bowman, James McDonald, Christophe Soumillon and Silvestre de Sousa, have been content to commit only to short contracts or hit-and-run assaults on the majors rather than take a risk on entering the Purton and Moreira domain full-time.
This season, Moreira leads the premiership with 138 wins to Purton’s 116, with a long gap back to next-best Teetan on 68 wins. Between them, the big two have taken 14 per cent of the rides and account for 34 per cent of all winners.
Sam Clipperton appeared to have cracked the puzzle with 40 wins in his first season after arriving in 2016, but support dropped away thereafter, resulting in the offer of only a six-month contract in his third term, by the end of which he had had enough.
“I don’t begrudge someone like Zac Purton,” he said. “Zac’s been there for 14 years and those first four or five years, he had to deal with all the same pressures, getting taken off horses; and at the time he was trying to establish, he’d have probably had Douglas Whyte doing the same as he and Joao are doing now. He had to face all the same adversity.”
Clipperton returned to Sydney in early 2019 but found he was “burnt out” and took a four-and-a-half-month sabbatical.
“It was the intensity of three years of Hong Kong and then thinking I could slip back into Sydney,” he continued. “I went from riding twice a week in a pretty cushy lifestyle to riding five or six days a week with three or four hours travelling.”
Clipperton said he had pondered whether he had any regrets about moving to Hong Kong, given that Sydney racing has become “just as competitive and ruthless” therefore making it difficult to re-establish himself, but he comes down on the “no regrets” side.
“I’m pretty proud that I gave it a red-hot crack,” he said. “I sometimes go back and watch my Hong Kong replays if I need a bit of motivation for here and I look at the riders I was against, like Ryan Moore, Christophe Soumillon, Douglas Whyte and Zac.”
Rispoli believes the current crop of riders lacks the depth of quality Hong Kong had around a decade ago when the line-up featured Whyte, Darren Beadman, Brett Prebble, Gerald Mosse and Olivier Doleuze, with Purton among those grafting away in mid-table.
“The first time I went to Hong Kong, the roster was much stronger than the one they have now,” he opined. “When you have a strong roster, the jockeys actually have more opportunity. When you reduce that quality and everyone is just looking for Joao and Zac, that makes it harder to get the good rides than when the roster is strong and those rides are spread around.”
Ferraris, 19, a two-time champion apprentice, will step into the cauldron and have to prove himself quickly.
“When I got on the plane to come here, I knew, although I was top five in South Africa, I’d have to start from zero,” Teetan said. “I had this mindset that to come here and be successful, you have to take Hong Kong like it’s your home.”
That should not be a problem for Ferraris, whose childhood home is at Sha Tin where his father, David Ferraris, has held a trainer’s licence since 2003. An exciting prospect with five Group 1 wins already on the board, his supportive family, as well as the HKJC, will be hoping he can tap some Callan-like fortitude and succeed where in recent seasons his precocious countrymen Callan Murray and Lyle Hewitson, like so many talented others, found the Hong Kong challenge a test too far.