Da Silva hails Silent Witness for epitomising HK's fighting spirit
Archie da Silva thought he was going to be cool, but as soon as he started speaking about Silent Witness - the horse who has changed his life - the tears started flowing like the Yangtze River.
The great Silent Witness had just run his last race, and finished a sad ninth out of 10 runners behind the young upstarts Scintillation and Absolute Champion in the Group One Centenary Sprint Cup.
Hong Kong's greatest-ever racehorse returned to an unfamiliar paddock - the loser's yard - and looked lost. There was another horse over there where he used to always be. And he was bleeding from those hind fetlock joints. Sadly, Silent Witness' final race was not without a measure of pain.
Trembling with emotion, Da Silva implored the people of Hong Kong to remember Silent Witness as the champion he used to be, up until the onset of that debilitating virus that he contracted after the Sprinters' Stakes in Japan in October 2005.
'This horse was here, winning and remaining unbeaten, when Hong Kong was going through its darkest hours,' Da Silva said.
