Over the course of his 13-season championship streak, Douglas Whyte would have had to choose between rides in the majority of races, but has there ever been a more seemingly difficult – and, from an outsider’s perspective, intriguing – decision than the one that looms ahead of next month’s BMW Hong Kong Derby?
When Luger was an ultra-impressive winner of a Class Two on Sunday, a race after Giant Treasure was a solid third in the Hong Kong Classic Cup, the stars aligned in a way that created a classic conundrum for Whyte on a number of levels.
If either was a touch less impressive, or if there were any other trainers involved – or it was any other big race for that matter – it might be a much easier choice. It’s a decision that goes far beyond who is the most likely Derby winner.
And that’s the thing – rarely are the decisions, even from Class One to Class Five as simple as that anyway, and that’s why factoring into your form “jockey X choosing horse A over horse B” as meaning absolutely anything is a strategy perhaps best made redundant, given the myriad and often interwoven reasons of how riders come to decide these types of things.
Stable loyalty, deals done months ago, historical links with owners and weight concerns all come into play. The top jockeys are so in-demand, they can be working on rides two weeks ahead of time – so, for example, they can be caught out by a trainer’s decision to back a horse up a week after a win that puts them up in grade.
But back to Whyte and this current curly one. Luger is the last link to the “Dream Team”, Whyte and John Size, who less than two years ago were still an unstoppable championship-winning juggernaut. In a near decade-long stretch, between the start of the 2004-05 season and the end of 2012-13, Whyte rode 362 winners for Size, the pair averaging a whopping 49 winners per season together for the last four terms of that period.
To provide some perspective on this “special” professional relationship, 50 winners in a season is a great season and enough for a top five season for a trainer or a jockey. In that space of time the pair also shared in many big race victories, including a Derby with Fay Fay in 2012. But last season, after the South African outlasted Zac Purton for a famous 2012-13 title win, the rug was pulled from under Whyte as the rides for Size dried up and the Durban Demon lost his crown, slipping to third on the ladder as Joao Moreira rolled into town and began dismantling people’s perceptions of reality.
Moreira himself has admitted that one of the most challenging aspects of adjusting to Hong Kong is figuring out which horse to ride in many races (that noise you just heard was the collective, and strongly sarcastic, “Oh, boo hoo,” of the Brazilian’s rival riders).
Luger is the only horse Whyte has ridden for Size this season, but many judges have the son of Choisir down as not only a more likely Derby winner than Giant Treasure but also a bona fide star of the future.
This four-year-old crop looks an even lot, and given the distance queries around Luger at 2,000m, there’s not much between he and Giant Treasure anyway. But who looks the most likely to be rated in the 120s – that is, an open-age Group One contender – six months from now? The straw poll of people walking past my desk today was that Luger is that horse.
So why is it so hard a decision? You want to win the Derby, assuming Luger is the more likely winner and has more upside - it's simple.
But it’s more about what Whyte would have to potentially give up.
Giant Treasure is owned by billionaire Pan Sutong, for whom he won the 2013 Derby on Akeed Mofeed, followed by the Hong Kong Cup on the same horse later that year. Also amongst the wins, wearing the same gold and red silks, are two Group One victories on Pan’s other star Gold-Fun.
With Whyte riding Peniaphobia last Sunday, Belgian jockey Christophe Soumillon was flown in to ride, and win, a Group One on Gold-Fun. Just as Whyte seized the opportunity to take over from Olivier Doleuze when he erred on Gold-Fun and became the designated go-to man for Pan, there’s little doubt “Soumi” will slide straight into that role to ride Giant Treasure if Whyte jumps off. The opportunity to get back on, however, is never guaranteed.
Of course, this is all making a mistake we alluded to earlier in the column – that of assuming. We are assuming we know all the factors and even that Whyte has the choice of rides.
Given what Luger symbolises, letting go of the ride on Luger would be a bit like deleting an ex-girlfriend’s phone number (or should we say, these days, de-friending and blocking an ex on Facebook). That is, even if you know it’s over – beyond an occasional hook-up – there’s a certain sense of finality to it (apologies to anyone made to feel uncomfortable by the use a hook-up metaphor involving Size and Whyte).
Pan is more than just obscenely rich, though – he seems truly committed to buying quality horses in the long-term.
Then there’s loyalty, which must play a part on both sides of the decision.
An interesting aside: this isn't the first time Whyte has faced a tough choice ahead of a Derby involving a Size-trained runner. Back in 2010 Whyte had ridden Size's Brave Kid on an unbeaten sequence of six straight victories, from his November debut right up to the Derby. Then Whyte made the agonising choice to jump off the second favourite for the race in favour of Caspar Fownes' Super Satin, the third favourite and a horse he had also ridden in lead-ups.
The decision turned out to be the right one, but only just – Whyte won his first Derby, he maintained his relationship with Size and won the jockeys' championship too, again, just, from Brett Prebble.
So, who is better qualified to make this exact type of decision and play it perfectly?
The man who has ridden more race winners than anyone in Hong Kong, and made more of these decisions – even if mostly on a smaller scale – Douglas Whyte.
