London Awards and £5 Million on Offer in Hong Kong

It is that time of year when awards are given out for the great and good of the equestrian sports horse world. This time virtually from London, but some worthy winners nevertheless. In Hong Kong, the main winter race meeting of the year was staged with over $5 million prize money on offer for the four Group 1 contests.

Sports Horse News

In Eventing, Lucinda Green was awarded a Life Time Achievement award at the Horse and Hound, supported by NAF virtual ceremony in London at the weekend. Lucinda won a plethora of competition at international level including World Equestrian Gold and European Gold five times, and an Olympic Team Silver. She won a total of seven gold medals in her riding career. Another to be recognised was Charlotte Dujardin who won the Professional Rider of the Decade award and her ride Valegro was awarded the SEIB Horse of the Decade award. Nick Skelton was also recognised for his win of the Rio Olympic individual Gold Showjumping medal with an award as the Horserall Moment of the Decade award.

Honours were split between Adrienne Lyle riding Harmony’s Duval in the grand prix special for the USA and Yvonne Losos De Muniz riding Aquamarijn for the grand prix freestyle to music for Argentina at the World Cup qualifier in Wellington over the weekend. In a fairly low key event due to the extraordinary levels of Covid in the USA, the scores were not great and the classes were generally poorly attended.

In Riyadh, there was a 2 star CSI which drew in several riders from Europe as there are no current competitions at international level at present. Germany’s Phillippe Weishaupt took the honours riding Coby, a 10 year old Hanoverian gelding. He had a double clear and won with over half a second to spare from Abdulla Alsharbatly from Saudi Arabia. There were six double clears in the jump off with a further single clear in the first round from the 23 starters.

Racing and Bloodstock

At the well-known Sha Tin racecourse in Hong Kong, there were four Group 1 races. The feature race was the Hong Kong Cup in which there were eight lining up at the start including Magical among four foreign raiders. In the event, Japan’s Kiyoshi Hagiwara trained the winner Normcore, a mare by Harbinger to win by a short head. The winner of the £1.5 million contest was ridden by Zac Purton. Second home was Win Bright, another Japanese bred gelding with Magical coming third.

The Hong Kong Vase over 1 ½ miles was won by Aidan O’Brien’s Mogul ridden by Ryan Moore. He won by 3 lengths from another foreign raider and Irish bred horse, Exultant. There were seven runners. Further success for Ryan Moore came in the Longines Hong Kong Sprint when he was aboard Japanese bred Danon Smash in the six furlong sprint. There were fourteen runners.

In the Longines Hong Kong mile, there were ten runners with the Australian bred Golden Sixty taking the winners spot. The Japanese connections of trainer K.W Lui and jockey C.Y Ho won by two lengths from Southern Legend.

In France at the Arqana Sales at Deauville, the directors were very satisfied that the figures for the sale were not too far off the record prices attained at the 2019 event. Although the figures were down as at all bloodstock sales this year, the average was only down about 8%

Sharing is caring!