Beauty Generation has questions to answer in Hong Kong Mile

HONG KONG – For much of the last two years, Beauty Generation’s camp had no need to hunt excuses. Now they find themselves scrambling for answers.

The questions go like this: Do consecutive losses following a 10-race winning streak that included back-to-back victories in the Hong Kong Mile and the highest international rating ever achieved by a Hong Kong horse signify the end of Beauty Generation’s dominance? Does Beauty Generation still have the psychological fire smoldering alongside physical flame to win the Group 1, $3.15 million HK Mile for the third year in a row Sunday?

Trainer John Moore wants to believe his horse does. Moore speculates Beauty Generation was too heavy by 20 pounds when he began this Hong Kong racing season with a course-record-setting win a 1,400-meter Sha Tin Stakes race. An overweight Beauty Generation might have been feeling the effect of that performance during two losses in November. He finished third both times, not beaten all that much. The good ship Hope hasn’t yet sailed out of Hong Kong harbor – has it?

“He hasn’t been beaten far. He’s not running last,” jockey Zac Purton said. “Going into this race I’m hopeful he’s going to produce his best, whereas last year I went into the race confident we were going to win.”

:: Hong Kong: Free PPs, picks, analysis, replays, and live streaming

Beauty Generation, Hong Kong’s reigning horse of the year, faces nine opponents in the Mile, contested around one turn with a decent backstretch run. Beauty Generation likes to lead and demands to at least stay close to the front, and Moore’s wish to draw outside main rival Ka Ying Star was granted, with the latter horse breaking from post 1, Purton and Beauty Generation from post 5. Beauty Generation led last month in the Jockey Club Mile until Purton pressed the accelerator with a quarter-mile to run and discovered a misfiring engine.

“He’s down to his fighting weight now,” Moore said Thursday morning after Beauty Generation had gone through a fast work on the Sha Tin turf. “We’ll just have to see.”

The Mile is rife with Japanese shippers, four of them, a group headed by Indy Champ. Indy Champ beat mighty Almond Eye over one mile in the Group 1 Yasuda Kinen this past June and comes into Sunday’s start following the other major win of his career, in the Group 1 Mile Championship. One point of concern: That race came just three weeks ago, and Indy Champ, who has no longstanding record of Group 1 success, stands as good a chance of regressing as repeating his recent performance.

Three-year-old Admire Mars is a multiple Group 1 winner in age-restricted competition who returned from a 5 1/2 month layoff Oct. 19 at Tokyo with a flat ninth in his Group 3 lead-in to this. Persian Knight was done in by post 14 when he closed decently to finish fifth in the 2018 HK Mile, and his third-place finish in the Mile Championship gives him more latitude to improve than Indy Champ. Four-year-old filly Normcore looks a cut below.

Waikuku could be the horse to bet. He’s already beaten Beauty Generation twice this season, albeit getting weight and now carrying 126 pounds, same as Beauty Generation. Waikuku, trained by John Size, is just a 4-year-old still on the upswing. He had an excellent 2018-19 Hong Kong season, closing from 13th after breaking from post 14 to finish second in a slow-paced Hong Kong Derby at a 2,000-meter distance farther than his best. Waikuku, the mount of Joao Moreira, caught the eye in a dirt training race Nov. 29 at Sha Tin and has the tactical speed to find a decent early position from post 10. Waikuku’s star might be quietly rising as Beauty Generation’s is loudly falling.