All the homework pays off for wily Moore

The 'glorious' sounds a trifle misplaced and a picture of trainer John Moore in the car park at Goodwood with a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc in one hand and the other trying to keep his straw hat from the wind hardly seems like the preamble to a Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Derby win.

'One of the trips I look forward to every year with my brother Gary is late July - Glorious Goodwood in England. We sit with our pasta and smoked salmon and a glass of white and watch them saddle up, go to the enclosure and we take photos and observe them and see what's about,' Moore said this week. 'It's a great few days' racing but the wind nearly blew me away last year.'

Up hill and down dale, Goodwood is a fabulous piece of rural England, a racecourse dropped into farming country from a great height and simply left where it landed.

'It's a testing track. Anything that wins there is worth a look. I probably shouldn't tell everyone - half the trainers in Hong Kong will go,' laughs Moore, who does the homework - and Derby favourite Collection is the latest result. 'A lot of trainers buy from Europe but they never go to see what they're buying - they trust the agents and agents can tell you anything.'

International travel might be the antithesis of work to most, but Moore admits that Goodwood is the only trip he enjoys.

'I hate the trips but they pay off. The last one in October, it was snowing. I hadn't seen snow for years and couldn't wait to get back to the pollution in Hong Kong!' he says. 'When the season ends, my vacation is 10 days playing golf then Gary and I go to England and look at stables through the south then up to Newmarket. Kern Lillingston Bloodstock - the only agent I've ever used - sets it up and we just drive. About 1,300km in a week, pulling horses out of boxes, photographing them. And not only those for sale.'