The annual Sa Sa Ladies Day at Shatin can always be depended on for cameras, lights, action and four-legged and two-legged fillies in all their finery and with Mr and Mrs Thomas and Eleanor Kwok, Chairman and Co-Chairman of the cosmetics company, lauding over it all- and why shouldn’t they? To them this is their day and they’ll vogue and pose if they want to and damn the rest of the plebs.
As for the racing, the first, one of those Class 5 races where it’s usually a lottery, the Cruz brothers managed to snare the quinella with Tony Cruz and Matthew Chadwick combining to win on Bullish Power and Derek Cruz’s Full Star, a horse I had never heard of, coming second while race caller Darren Flindell did a great job to figure out what the hell was happening as horses were coming from all over the fucking place. It was like a battle scene from “Braveheart”.
A rare photograph of Darren Flindell calling Race 1 until he turned blue…and red .
New apprentice Dickie “Louie” Louie rode Humungous with almost Herculean effort as it banged into a few other horses and looked like a married man out in Wanchai when the wife’s outta town singing “Louie Louie” with a cold one in one hand and a hot takeaway from Escape hanging off the other. It was not a pretty sight to watch, but I like little Dickie. The kid has balls and now just needs to fine tune his navigational and fine motor skills.
My ears pricked up when Jenny Chapman, Trackside’s Paddock Expert, mentioned something about someone getting their leg over which, disappointingly, was about a horse taking its place in race 2.Well, birds do it, bees do it and even educated fleas do it and, so why be surprised if horses, too, like to get their leg over?
Despite a massive late plunge on that cripple Duo Glory and a short-priced favorite in Well Fit, the race was won by the Dougie Whyte ridden Xi Yeng Men.
Trained by Me Tsui- and Me, Tarzan- the horse won in a canter after which some Hello Kitty girls introduced themselves to the hundreds of thousands on course.
Percy Jackson which lost its “Percy” during the off season won the next in a tight finish with the favourite Taknam and which brought up a running double for Whyte and with trainer Sean “Bob The Builder” Woods continuing his winning run. But what was that he was wearing on his head? A dead bird. If that thing brings him luck, so be it.
Sean?
Meanwhile, a breathless JoJo McKinnon was striding all over the place in her high heels interviewing people and came and asked me where I got my hat from.
This immediately resulted in a horde of photographers encircling me and asking if I was someone famous. Hearing this, the Hello Kitty girls made mewing sounds as they vogued in my direction while I was still thinking of Sean Woods’ cat in a hat.
David Hall and Brett Prebble combined to take out race 4 on Surrounded which looked like a new horse and with a new “Percy.” It won like a champion and the way Prebble saluted the win and blew Sa Sa kisses to the crowd on his way back showed that the win was no fluke.
As for the favorite in the race- Theheroinmyheart and which I call “the heroin horse”, well, it should be smacked whereas Weichong Marwing became Wayward again and was never spotted in the race on the well-backed Cosmo One. He must have headed for another McHappy Meal.
Weichong McWin drops by to make some people very McHappy.
I must have worked as a McHappy McWing won the next as I ogled the wah wah Sa Sa models and at their la la outfits and cast an eye over Jenny Chapman who was wearing a nice crimson outfit complete with a potted plant on her head outta which grew antennas. She must have been tipping winners to her Martian fan club.
“Jenny give tip, Jenny give tip, Jenny give tip, Jenny…”
Meanwhile, Jojo talked through her hat to Maree Prebble and Alix Fownes and seems hell-bent on turning Hong Kong racing into something as stylish as Oz through the promotion of, well, hats and Mad Hatters. It really all sounded quite foreign and very mad. But E for breathless Aussie enthusiasm.
Before the running of The Ladies Purse, we watched in awe as Little Timmy Clark came from last to win Race 6 on Caga Spirit- his third successive win and hats off to trainer Richard Gibson for this affort. The win must have made JoJo breathless.
JoJo? Is that you, possum?
Then came the shock when the day’s shortest-priced favourite for the day- The Peak- ridden by Dougie Whyte and trained by Johnny Size- lived up to its name and peaked on its run and didn’t even run a place. As one wag in Oz tweeted a friend next to me, “Whyte must have been watching Nash Rawiller’s ride on Pierro” and used the hashtag “#overrated” to hammer home the “loser” message.
As for the big race of the day, well, Hong Kong saw a possible new superhorse in Jungle John Moore’s Packing Whiz which gave Brett Prebble a well-deserved treble. The win was spectacular as it beat a pretty good field, but just looking at the way in which he did it was quite incredible. Moore, who was dressed for the occasion like Truman Capote trained the quinella and it was more than a well-deserved result.
Thomas and Eleanor Kwok, who had Beauty Flash running in the same race, put on a brave front and handed out a glittering buffet of prizes. I would have preferred to have taken Miss Sa Sa, below, home- gift-wrapped- but all I could do was watch and gently weep like George Harrison’s guitar.
I then sobbed like a girlie man when outsiders ended up taking the first four positions in race 10 but it was good to see my old mate David Ferraris aka Darth Ferraris train a double – Strathtay and the winner of the last in Fleet Command, once owned by the incredibly noble gentleman that was Sir John Swaine, and ridden by my OTHER “mate” Wayward McWing. Below, Darth gives McWing his riding instructions before Race 10. I hear they headed to McDonald’s without even posing for the winning photograph.
All in all, a tremendous of racing, a jam-packed Shatin, attendance and turnover up- as usual- plus wah-wah performaces by Brett Prebble, Packing Whiz and John Moore and some much needed Ooooh La La in Hong Kong from those wonderful folks at Sa Sa
The Guru
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