Champion SA jockey Keagan de Melo starts Hong Kong adventure

Keagan de Melo, South Africa’s newly crowned champion jockey, makes his eagerly anticipated debut at Sha Tin racecourse on Sunday – the first meeting of the new 2023/24 Hong Kong racing season.

De Melo is lucky to have some familiar faces in the jockey room of his new stamping ground: three-time SA champion Lyle Hewitson, ex-champion apprentice Luke Ferraris and sometime SA Jockey Academy graduate Karis Teetan.

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They have given him advice on handling the notoriously tricky racing environment in Hong Kong, and Hewitson revealed what he’d told his SA championship successor in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Friday.

“Keagan’s outlook is he’s got to make it work,” Hewitson told writer Mark Worwood.

“It’s the same for a lot of us South Africans when we come here. We’ve got to make it work because we can’t backtrack to South Africa. It’s not feasible once you see what you can achieve here.”

Hard knocks

Few are better placed than Hewitson to give advice. In his first stint in Hong Kong, in 2019, the thrusting young star had the wind well and truly taken out of his sails when he endured 140 rides before landing his first winner in the city – in the shape of a horse called Last Kingdom.

He returned home a trifle deflated but snatched another SA championship and earned himself another go in the racing-mad island enclave.

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Second time around, last season, Hewitson got on the winning trail a lot sooner and ended up fifth on the 22-jockey log with 50 winners – behind six-time champion Zac Purton, Australian veteran Hugh Bowman, local hero CY Ho and Teetan.

“Nobody could have had it harder than me. It doesn’t get worse than that,” Hewitson said.

“And look where I am now. I’m only halfway to where I want to be, if even that. But from where I started, it’s a bloody long way.”

High-stakes environment

The problem in ferociously competitive Hong Kong is that trainers have little margin for patience with a temporarily off-form rider. For their own careers, they must associate with winners.

It is a very high-stakes environment. Superstition and perceived bad karma are significant factors.

South Africans have generally done well in Hong Kong, with the likes of Dougie Whyte, Felix Coetzee and Basil Marcus becoming champions. Other jockeys, such as Aldo Domeyer, Grant van Niekerk, Richard Fourie and Piere Strydom, have had stints there but have not stayed – for one reason or another.

Victory on one of his three mounts at Sunday’s 10-race meeting will be just the ticket for De Melo to set out a marker. He partners Valhalla in Race 5, Speedstar in Race 8 and Prime Minister in Race 10.