This piece takes on different plot twists and turns like some Alfred Hitchcock or Twilight Zone movie script, but let’s start off with one of the more stranger riding stints in Hong Kong by an overseas jockey.
When the jockey is the enigmatic Blake Shinn, this strangeness was to be expected.
Before finally granted a license to ride in Hong Kong during the 2019-20 season, there were a couple of years of false starts and rumours that the Group 1 winning champion Australian jockey was a shoe-in.
In fact, the first and only time I ever met him was at Adrenaline during one of those Happy Wednesday nights. I was asked if I could pry myself away from the lady with whom I was with and interview him.
He was in Hong Kong with who he was dating at the time and it was a pretty hurried few words between us.
There was nothing heard about Blake Shinn after that until he was finally in Hong Kong with little or no fanfare. It had been a bit like waiting for the Scarlet Pimpernel or the Lone Ranger to show up.
During the seasons riding in Hong Kong, like Keyser Soze, he’s been an enigma- mysterious and travelling under the radar.
Many times one thought he had quietly left the building with Elvis. But he was there riding some brilliant tactical races, bringing in some big winners, but never really revelling in the wins.
Maybe he didn’t really care about praises being lavished on him. After all, he had won plenty of big races including the 2008 Melbourne Cup on Viewed trained by the great Bart Cummings.
After almost losing his life in a track work accident at Randwick a year earlier when he broke his neck, one can only guess that priorities had changed and he returned to race riding with a different mindset.
Despite winning big races in Hong Kong on horses like Russian Emperor for Douglas Whyte, his mind often seemed to be astral travelling somewhere else.
His interviews about the chances of his horses in races were always informative, but maybe he knew that it was hardly anything that was going to change the world. It was nothing personal, just a jockey going through the motions of his business.
After fulfilling his riding engagements at Happy Valley this coming Wednesday night, Blake Shinn returns home to Australia.
Why choose a Wednesday of what’s sure to be a pretty ho-hum night racing to bow out? Does it really matter?
He’s been forthright enough to say that he really couldn’t handle being stuck in Hong Kong racing’s Zero Covid “bubble” anymore, how it was doing his head in, and that he needed to see his mother.
With the serious injuries he’s suffered over the years, who could blame him for wanting to call time on lockdown days and enjoy that crazy little thing called life?
He’s stuck it out longer than most thought he would despite showing some of the best rides seen in what’s been a topsy turvy Hong Kong racing season.
It’s been an Annus Horribilis for the Hong Kong Jockey Club this season that’s going to take some work to once again be recognised as one of the best racing jurisdictions in the world.
Of course for this to happen, it’s something that’s going to be totally dependent on a city very much under the thumb of its motherland.
Listening to China’s President Xi Jinping address Hong Kong and the world on a rainy July 1 and on the 25th Anniversary of the Handover at the inauguration of new Chief Executive John Lee, it was obvious that it was time to switch off the mantra about One Country, Two Systems.
It wasn’t a speech so much as a hailstorm of fire and rain mandates on what he expected from Hong Kong led by a new sense of purpose and patriotism. Out with the old...
It was about accepting new challenges, the importance of safety in the city and seeing the opportunities and understanding the reason for Hong Kong going to have its own Palace Museum.
It’s importance and what it’s going to stand for was not lost on CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout’s short piece for the American news channel with its set narrative on what it sees as the future of Hong Kong.
Also mentioned was the importance for the next generation of ”Hongkongers” of the game changing Greater Bay Area programme, and how Ocean Park, Disneyland, Regina Ip’s hairdresser and the One Country, Two Systems mantra are part of a past that will soon be rewritten and disappear.
As for Blake Shinn- told you there would be twists and turns to this story- in between a spate of suspensions for careless riding, stood down for testing positive to Covid- he managed to find some bars to visit and which meant him breaking free from being a shackled bubble boy- and fined $600,000 for playing truant.
He certainly wasn’t hiding anything from anyone as he posted photos of himself out on the town with a few friends on his Instagram account. After Wednesday night’s racing he’s off with no doubt an open invitation to return. He’s a very very good rider, and at his best in distance races. He’s also proven his resilience to go the distance according to his own mental time table and knowing when he needed to stop the world and get off. Far more important, and something to get one’s head around as the number eight tropical storm signal went up yesterday soon after President Xi left the city and the horse racing ended, is accepting the new Hong Kong and looking at how and where future opportunities lie.
Personally speaking, the glass is half full.
It’s how one looks at it and reads the tea leaves.
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