There were discussion points at Sha Tin from trainers Derek Cruz and Dennis Yip Chor-hong about the significance of the Year Of The Monkey but the huge crowd probably thought the opening day of the new lunar year looked more like the Year Of The Brazilian.
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Almost 90,000 turned up for racing on Wednesday – marginally down on the record 2015 turnout – as Joao Moreira and Silvestre de Sousa went about carving the meeting up between them with seven of the 11 winners and four of the quinellas.
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De Sousa had the auspicious honour of riding the first winner of the new year on Chans Delight, relegating Moreira to second and, while he has ridden many better horses even in his brief time in Hong Kong, it was the crowd and the experience that thrilled him.
“It was a different experience. It’s great to ride on a big stage with a big crowd – you feel like a football player,” the Brazilian said. “There’s a little more pressure but it’s great to see a racetrack full and it was easy to get motivated.”
Chans Delight’s trainer, Derek Cruz said it was “very important” to get the first winner but wasn’t too sure of the niceties of the animal signs.
“I am a goat so I don’t know what that means for me in the Year Of The Monkey, but I do know it’s important to get the first race,” Cruz said.
Yip on the other hand seemed to have a better handle on such matters after winning the second race with Lightning And Gold, ridden by Moreira.
“I’m a goat too and I think the Year Of The Monkey will be good for the goat – this goat anyway. I think the second half of the season is going to be good for me,” he said.
Moreira took back-to-back Chinese New Year Cups, which he won last year for John Size on Real Specialist, after Thewizardofoz gave the combination a comfortable victory in the feature to the delight of favourite backers.
“This is a horse I really like so much and he has more improvement in him,” claimed Moreira, while Size was eyeing off the narrowing options for the four-year-old after winning the cup for the fifth time in 15 years.
Betting turnover was down from last year’s record high of HK$1.7 billion, to HK$1.47 billion, but chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges said it was nothing to be worried about in the current climate.
“Actually, last year was up by a huge percentage compared to the 2013-14 Lunar New Year meeting and this year we have come back to that 2013-14 level, so it isn’t too bad, but it is symptomatic of the economic times we are facing,” he said.
“But the racing, the sport was fantastic, the atmosphere was great and I think people who came to celebrate the Year Of the Monkey had a tremendous start to the new year.”
