Cryptic notes from the crib
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The Whyte Knight to the rescue...and brings up weightier issues...
To some he is enigmatic, to others he’s kinda weird in almost a Norman Bates way, but when one takes some time out and thinks about his life journey and how close he’s come to not being here in the Now with us, Melbourne Cup winning jockey Blake Shinn, 34, can do whatever the hell he wants and not give a damn about what anyone else might think. Except maybe for Douglas Whyte. But before this...
What’s pretty surprising is that Shinn, after finally receiving a riding license from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, has chosen to make Hong Kong his home after years of stop-start speculation about him being part of this racing jurisdiction.
However, through trial and error and learning about its various quirks and how one is often judged by the company they keep, Blake Shinn, who’s produced some excellent and creative rides, is currently riding high on a winning streak that’s welcoming him in from the cold. He now just needs to keep away from suspensions. These can slow down any momentum built.
At the last race meeting of 2021- a lowly all-dirt night meeting at Shatin- he rode a treble. Big deal? Why not? A winner is a winner, no matter where it is, especially during these spectacularly surreal times.
On this particular night, he rode winners for Douglas Whyte, John Size and Benno Yung.
What’s important to understand is the timing of everything he has achieved, and where, if one were to take Zac Purton and Joao Moreira out of the equation, the riding ranks in Hong Kong are looking rather dusty, rusty and quite, well, sparse.
Because of this, the doors of opportunity open wider for a rider with the experience and guile of Blake Shinn.
One winner on Wednesday night- Will Power- rang up a double for the budding Shinn-Whyte partnership.
This added to the win on Carroll Street at the meeting earlier. Perhaps more importantly, with Shinn on his back, there were the first signs of form by the trainer’s highly-touted and expensive purchase Russian Emperor.
There was then Shinn’s first Group 1 win in Hong Kong last month aboard the Caspar Fownes trained Sky Field on an eventful International Race Day.
There have also been a number of other winners here and there for different trainers over the past two months with his main support system being David Hayes.
He now also has Caspar Fownes and Douglas Whyte in his corner with the latter seemingly having an aversion towards using The Big Two. For the former history making champion rider, it’s about using the lesser known lights and with everyone succeeding. It’s Whyte Magic and, kinda like being Noah and an old hippie, he’s spreading the rides and the lurve.
Shinn’s impressive calling card is now reaching the right people, especially when it comes to those owners who somehow have 2-3 runners in the higher class races.
Douglas Whyte, who’s not prone to heaping praise on jockeys and stopped using Shinn for a while after he failed to show up for a barrier trial for his galloper Stronger, was moved enough to say on Wednesday night, “Blake is riding with absolute confidence and it’s wonderful to watch”. It was sweet to hear. It was like he was tripping out on acid.
That’s not all. Whyte, who some owners have mentioned to us over the past few months as “top racing executive material” in the future, questioned the club last week as to why the present rules prevent trainers from having a jockey like- well- Blake Shinn riding overweight and not only the permitted couple of extra pounds.
Makes sense to us and no doubt high on the agenda of Andrew Harding, the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s dynamic Executive Director of Racing, pictured below with, we guess, an old mate.
As Whyte mentioned to Sam Agars of the SCMP, “I wish that the club would allow a jockey like Blake to ride 120 pounds plus two. I know I’m bringing up a bad topic here for the club, but I do think that it will allow Trainer and Owners more opportunities- and Blake more opportunities, because he makes a difference”.
As a trainer, Whyte tackles the subject head on when he says this: “It’s our choice”, meaning whether to use the “plus two” pounds or not.
Douglas Whyte is no fool. He’s not some fatuous dough boy getting fat off the land by being a corporate doofus.
He is also not a loose cannon like some jockeys and trainers we know who often bite the corporate hand that feeds them and get all creepy on their happy hunting grounds on Twitter armed with their usual emojis. It’s Noddy in Retirement Home stuff and shows intellectual shrinkage. Plus, No. One. Cares.
As for the thirteen time Champion Jockey of Hong Kong, he is measured and tows the corporate line unless there’s a very good reason to topple the apple cart while still keeping things in check.
He’s always been diplomatic, politically correct and is respected by many at the club and owners. When he speaks people listen.
Bringing this kinda obvious subject up now with this being a very different Hong Kong to what it was, and the club unable to attract quality riders- apprentices Angus Chung and Ellis Wong, apparently heading this way from Adelaide are hardly the answer- is an interesting one.
It’s something very unlike Douglas Whyte to question- but it’s also very much like the person that he is. Confused? Don’t be.
Here’s something else to think about- the current spate of jockey suspensions. How are these going to be juggled around and rolled out so that various “deferments” don’t start to look choreographed?
Anything to add, Rod?
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OH, GAWD PLEASE, NO MORE OVERNIGHT REPEATS AND REPEATS AND BEING REPETITIVE, RACING AND SPORTS RADIO STATIONS...
Gawd knows it was so welcomed by us and those we know when we tuned in during the lead up to 2022 and heard Tab Radio in Western Australia take a short break from playing Repeat after Repeat of programming from the times when Ben Hur was riding and offering up some music.
Heard during their overnight broadcasts were Stealers Wheel, Killers, some Gerry Rafferty and even the entire version of “Sympathy For The Devil” by the Rolling Stones- at around 4am.
These music breaks also steel many from listening to repeat after repeat after repeat. Like the same interviews with Neville Parnham, Jim Taylor, Adam Durant and Gary Hall Jr etc etc looped and played 3-4 times within a couple of hours. Thankfully, there were no repeats of Carol Mills and her well crafted Corporate Speak.
This is before Spanky And Our Gang come on ‘live’ at around 5.30am with Spanky unleashing his usual drivel and being proof positive that he needs to get out of Western Australia more often.
Pops and the other Tim do their best to keep everything from falling apart completely, but it’s difficult when Spanky has already shown his hand- like his recent Top 10 hits and misses in horse racing and sports.
Here’s to personal choice, but, Oh dear...
It makes us wonder, and as we have been saying for years, why these “racing and sports radio stations” in Oz don’t simply play more music when it’s obvious they don’t have enough new content to continue 24/7?
Listening over and over again to things like countdowns to the Melbourne Cup, tips for races already run and fizzy “game plans” for betting when the horses have already bolted etc shows things plodding along on very much borrowed time.
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THE WIZ EASES ON DOWN THE ROAD
The Wizard Of Oz- William Pike- along with two other riders either not being able to ride in the Perth Cup or not wishing to due to sudden new vaccination rules being implemented for the race, shows just how quickly things can change.
Bubbles are irrelevant as Covid-19 doesn’t discriminate, nor do the variants look like dissipating anytime soon.
We’re tipping another two years before there’s some kind of normalcy. Like us, many are looking at their lives more closely and those closest to them knowing that they have to make some tough life decisions. Racing can wait.
Horse racing without champion jockey William Pike will leave a huge hole in the riding ranks, especially in Western Australia. It will also offer more opportunities to 2-3 other riders, but, and not to be the harbinger of bad news, the long term picture for all sports doesn’t look good.
One can mass debate this subject until the cows come home...and then what?
It’s a bloody waste of time as no one, not even the pharmaceutical companies, have the magic elixir.
As for the various governments and their health experts? Please.
All in all, it’s a sobering Wake Up call for every sport and every racing jurisdiction- and each one is very very different- to perhaps finally look at where they’re going and what they can do no matter how small this might be.
Answers MIGHT seem to be thin on the ground and we MIGHT be singing how “we’re prisoners here of our own device”, BUT, taking the blinkers off and admitting that these are new times that require New Thinking- and not from the usual suspects born and bred on The Punt- might help. Really.
Just imagine, for example, programming that showcases the beauty of horses in their natural habitats.
Perhaps this type of goodness can somehow help the well being of viewers and succeed where the big boys from other industries have stumbled and failed because of not looking beyond the obvious.
We’re tipping this type of thinking will be embraced by the mainstream media and can do more for the perception of racing horses than anything being marketed right now and where the main objective is to get people over 18 to bet.
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