Glorious Forever makes it two for Lor with Hong Kong Cup triumph

HONG KONG – Hong Kong trainer Frankie Lor won his first Group 1 race Sunday at Sha Tin Racecourse when Mr. Stunning took the Hong Kong Sprint. Two hours later, Glorious Forever gave Lor a second win on the Hong Kong International Races card with a victory in the Hong Kong Cup, giving Hong Kong horses a sweep of the day’s four Group 1s.

Under Silvestre de Sousa, Glorious Forever emulated Time Warp’s win in the 2017 Cup, whipping straight to the lead and never giving it up.

What’s notable is that he did so at the expense of Time Warp himself, his older full brother by one year. Both horses are by Archipenko out of Here to Eternity, by Stormy Atlantic.

Glorious Forever and Time Warp dueled each other into submission last month in the prep for the Hong Kong Cup, and Lor insisted on several occasions this week that his horse wouldn’t get into a similar fight with Time Warp on Sunday. He was playing possum. De Sousa sent Glorious Forever hard from his rail draw and it was Zac Purton on Time Warp to the outside who backed off.

“I just went out of there,” said de Sousa, the champion England-based jockey who won his first Hong Kong Group 1. “I was happy to just sit and try and get the fractions right.

He got them right. Galloping clear, Glorious Forever’s fractions weren’t as slow as Time Warp’s glacial pace a year ago, but they weren’t demanding: the 400 meters went in 25.88, the 800 in 50.56, the 1,200 in 1:14.62. It was slow enough for Glorious Forever, who flicked away a mild challenge from need-the-lead Time Warp after turning for home and hit the line a length in front of the Japanese mare Deirdre. Glorious Forever went his final 400 in 23 flat and was timed in 2:01.71 for 2,000 meters over good ground.

“I didn’t want to overdo it in front, but to make sure Time Warp didn’t come around, I had to make sure we were going a true gallop,” de Sousa said. “I won the battle for the first 300 meters and I was going so well at the 800, I thought to myself they would have to be very good to pick him up.”

Deirdre flashed home in in 22.37 seconds for her final 400 but crashed into a race shape set firmly against her. Sungrazer, a tick behind favored Deirdre in the betting, finished fourth, 1 1/4 lengths behind Time Warp. Glorious Forever, who took sustained early betting action on Saturday night into Sunday, paid $15.60 to win in the U.S.

Glorious Forever, like his trainer, struck for the first time at the highest level, and in fact was making his Group 1 debut. He’d been sixth and second since an open-lengths Class 2 handicap victory to start his season and clearly ran the race of his life when it counted most.

Glorious Forever raced eight times in England for trainer Ed Walker during 2016 and 2017 before owner Michael Kwan Wing Lok brought to Hong Kong and into Lor’s stables. Lor, 52, rode nearly 15 years here with modest success, then switched to the training track, working for top Hong Kong conditioner John Size in advance of being granted a full license of his own for the 2017 – 2018 season. He found plenty of success on a program-to-program basis here from the start, and Sunday found plenty more on the biggest program of the Hong Kong season.