Beauty Generation blows doors off Hong Kong Mile

HONG KONG – Beauty Generation’s saucer-shaped feet have given him trouble this autumn. In the Group 1, $3.2 million Hong Kong Mile on Sunday at Sha Tin Racecourse, he ran a good field right off their feet.

Owned by a Hong Kong family with a cosmetics empire, Beauty Generation stripped the make-up from 13 rivals and unmasked them as plain Janes shrinking in the shadows of his brilliance.

Taken on early by three different horses to his inside, Beauty Generation bulled his way to the front by running a second 400 meters in 22.89 seconds, was given a breather by jockey Zac Purton around the second part of the Sha Tin turn, and then blew the doors off the Hong Kong Mile, crackling his final 400 in 22.88 seconds. He won by three lengths without feeling the crop, Purton easing up after looking over his right shoulder for nonexistent competition 50 meters out.

Beauty Generation ($3) won the HK Mile for the second year in a row and justified his international rating as the top turf miler in the world. John Moore, who trained Hong Kong star miler Able Friend, rated Beauty Generation’s performance Sunday as the best in his 32-season Hong Kong career.

“John specifically asked me to come in yesterday morning and get in a canter on the big track,” Purton said. “When I got off him, I thought to myself, 'They’re not going to beat him.’ I slept pretty well last night.”

The Japanese mare Vivlos ended her career with a creditable second, finishing a neck in front of Southern Legend. Beauty Only missed the break but did well thereafter, coming from 14th to nab fourth. Second choice Persian Knight came with a marauding run around the far turn before watching Beauty Generation’s churning hindquarters disappear into the distance. Breeders’ Cup Mile fifth-place finisher One Master mustered merely a mild move for eighth.

Beauty Generation was timed in 1:32.52, .88 seconds off the 1,600-meter course record he established winning the HK Mile prep last month while racing on soles that became sore after shoeing. He might have run faster today had he not tucked the Mile trophy under his saddle with 300 meters left to race.

Patrick Kwok Ho Chuen (whose father is a longtime Hong Kong Jockey Club owner) bought Beauty Generation, a modestly bred son of New Zealand sire Road to Rock and the mare Stylish Bel, out of Australia on the advice of Moore and his son, George. Now Moore is keen to en-courage young Patrick to take the gelding out of Hong Kong, where he has no competition in his current form.

“We’ve got a real good horse on our hands here,” Moore said. “He needs to go away to make him a global great.”

Moore would like to run Beauty Generation in the $6 million Dubai Turf on the Dubai World Cup undercard. If the present iteration of Beauty Generation travels, no one with a horse for the race will be pleased to see him walk off the plane in Dubai.

Beauty Generation had post 12, broke sharply under Purton, and had Comin’ Through, Southern Legend, and Fifty Fifty between him and the fence a furlong into the race. But Beauty Generation has plenty of speed – pace has never been a problem – and by the turn, Purton had maneuvered to the inside and had the lead.

Beauty Generation actually is not a beautiful horse, but he is powerful and athletic, crouching low when it is time to really work.

“When he gets to the corner, he lets loose,” Moore said, and that’s exactly how Beauty Generation set about his business Sunday. He leapt for home, setting his blinkered eyes down the long straightaway on the wire, and if Purton had to encourage Beauty Generation to find it, he did so with only a flick of his hands, a few words beneath the crowd’s crescendo. Everyone’s eyes widened as Beauty Generation accelerated down the runway, a solo show.

Moore had pegged Beauty Generation his first season in Hong Kong as solidly good, many lengths from great. Now he has won five in a row, four Group 1s, his second HK Mile more memorable than his first.

“I’m just happy for the horse that he’s come out and produced it on the big stage, that he’s shown everyone how brutally effective he can be,” Purton said.

The stage might get bigger still. It’s difficult to imagine Beauty Generation becoming any more brutal.