Sha Tin a ray of sunshine amid dark clouds and rain

The HK$10-million Champions & Chater Cup at Sha Tin on Sunday is the final “major” of the current Hong Kong season, so will attract much attention in the racing-mad city.

The race meeting takes place in a fearful atmosphere, with heavy persistent rain, renewed coronavirus scares in the region and a menacing cloud of political crackdown by the Chinese central government.

On the ghostly crowd-free racecourse, it will be all about veteran trainer John Moore, for whom it will be a final Grade 1 tilt as he has been forced to retire by the all-powerful local Jockey Club now that he has hit the age of 70.

Sometime Australian Moore is aiming for his seventh Cup and goes in “all guns blazing” with four of the seven horses carded. Despite this bristling arsenal of thoroughbreds, he won’t be saddling the favourite, Exultant; that honour goes to Tony Cruz – another Hong Kong icon – who, rather amazingly, trains all the other runners.

The jockey championship is shaping up for an exciting photo-finish between incumbent Zac Purton and former champ Joao Moreira. The two riders are neck-and-neck heading towards the season finale on 12 July and, perhaps inevitably, square off in Sunday’s 2400m clash.

Aussie Purton partners Exultant for Cruz, while Brazilian Moreira climbs aboard Moore’s well-fancied Savvy Nine.

If more spice were needed for South African punters, one of Moore’s runners is Chefano, a son of Silvano, bred at Maine Chance Farms at Robertson in Western Cape, who scored a memorable wire-to-wire victory in the Queen Mother Memorial Cup over course and distance three weeks ago.

Moore told the South China Morning Post he thought Chefano might enjoy the soft ground that will be the result of heavy, persistent rain.

However, the trainer confessed his best chances lie with Savvy Nine and Helene Charisma, to be ridden by Antoine Hamelin, the Frenchman who replaced SA’s Aldo Domeyer on the Hong Kong jockey roster when the latter opted to lockdown with his family in Cape Town.

Moore has been a dominant presence in Hong Kong racing for decades, ever since starting out with his father’s yard in the city. Clad in his trademark “safari-suit” shirts – with wildly unfashionable epaulettes and button-down breast pockets – he has saddled more than 1,700 winners, won the trainer championship five times and carried off just about every trophy in sight.

“It would be great to depart Hong Kong on a Group 1 win and, as far as I’m concerned, we have a great chance of doing it,” Moore told the SCMP. “If the favourite [Exultant] doesn’t come with his A game, we will be coming all guns blazing.”

The weekend’s racing kicks off on Friday with action from Australia, France and the US. With the French government having done an about-turn on allowing “ghost” meetings in the Paris areas, many fixtures have been switched to other areas – such as Vichy and Dieppe on Friday.

British and Irish racing is on track to recommence on 1 June, while a South African restart remains bogged down in government torpor.

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