On the final Sunday of April 2020, Ballon d’Or winner Michael Owen awoke early to watch one of his former horses place second in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize (1,200m).

Three years on to the week, the legendary footballer’s routine will be the same, but he hopes the result will be different when one of his current gallopers contests the Group One race’s 2023 edition.

Flaming Rib, whom former Liverpool, Manchester United and Real Madrid striker Owen owns in partnership with James Dale, Tom Dolan and James Dooley, was the last of this year’s eight FWD Champions Day international raiders to arrive in Hong Kong, but England’s sixth-highest goalscorer would love him to be the first of the HK$20 million dash’s eight runners to finish.

If Flaming Rib bags the Chairman’s Sprint Prize and stops Manfred Man Ka-leung’s Lucky Sweynesse netting the Hong Kong Speed Series hat-trick that carries a HK$5 million bonus, the four-year-old entire will usurp former Man-prepared horse Big Time Baby as Owen’s favourite galloper to race in the city.

“He was owned by myself, my best friend and my parents. We bought him relatively cheaply and had an exciting time with him. We sold him well – at least we considered we sold him well – and he went on to be one of the top sprinters in Hong Kong,” Owen said of Big Time Baby, the £45,000 (HK$440,000) yearling who earned more than HK$12 million in prize money.

“His form progressed to a new level, and we were all delighted about that. He was a great story for us to follow from afar. It gives me great satisfaction horses we trained here at Manor House Stables can go there and perform to a really high level. Hopefully, it encourages people to come back and be interested in buying our horses in the future as well.”

Big Time Baby was a $29 roughie in the 2020 Chairman’s Sprint Prize in which he finished three-quarters of a length behind Mr Stunning, and Flaming Rib is likely to be one of this year’s outsiders.

Owen, for whom racing is his post-soccer life – “I do, maybe, 100 days of commentating and punditry work, but every single minute outside of doing my day-to-day football work you’ll find me at my stables” – believes Hugo Palmer-prepared Flaming Rib is much better than what he showed against the likes of Sight Success and Duke Wai in last month’s Group One Al Quoz Sprint (1,200m) at Meydan.

“He’s a very good up-and-coming young sprinter,” Owen said of Flaming Rib, who ran second to Perfect Power in last year’s Group One Commonwealth Cup (1,200m) at Royal Ascot for his best result on British soil.

“He went over to Qatar a couple of months ago and won a Grade Three over there. He ran really well and was exceptionally promising. Then he went to Dubai, where the race didn’t pan out as we expected. We were all told – and history would have it – a high draw was very favourable, but six of the first seven were drawn in the low numbers, which went against the normal Al Quoz Sprint draw bias.

“The Hong Kong horse who was drawn alongside us, Sight Success, ran a particularly good race, so it’s not like we won the race on our side, but we do feel like we were slightly disadvantaged by the draw.

Cordyceps Six transferred from Gibson to Lui and withdrawn from Group One

“We go to Hong Kong with our eyes firmly open. We know it’s going to be a huge task. We realise that, on ratings, ours isn’t going to be the most fancied horse, but we were invited and the prize money is such that it’s worth trying our luck.

“It’s great to be racing abroad. It’s great to be racing in a place like Hong Kong. I’ve always wanted a horse running in Hong Kong. The one sad thing about it is I can’t make it. I’m scheduled to be working on the television doing the Premier League football games, and I simply can’t get out of it.

“Hopefully, Flaming Rib can run with credit. If he can finish in the prize money that would be amazing and justify the trip. This is what racing is all about – international competition – so I hope everybody enjoys the fact there’s a British runner and they give him a bit of a cheer in my absence.”