Jockeys in the spotlight Wednesday at Happy Valley

HONG KONG – The feature on the Wednesday night card at Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong is not actually a race. Nor is it even really the horses themselves in the spotlight. Rather, this is a night for the riders, with 12 jockeys set to participate in the 2017 renewal of the Longines International Jockey Challenge.

The lineup includes four Hong Kong-based riders and eight jockeys who have shipped in from foreign jurisdictions, among them the California-based French native Flavien Prat, who has his first rides in Hong Kong on Wednesday night.

Also coming is Ryan Moore, who has won this competition twice, and Hugh Bowman, the Australian champion jockey who won the 2016 IJC and is the regular pilot aboard the famed Australian mare Winx. Pierre Charles-Boudot from France, Christian Demuro from Italy, Leandro Henrique from Brazil, Sylvestre de Sousa from England, and Keita Tosaki from Japan round out the international part of the field.

Joao Moreira won the 2012 IJC and joins Zac Purton, Karis Teetan, and Derek Leung as Hong Kong’s representatives.

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Moreira and De Sousa both are natives of Brazil, and that is where Henrique, who is just 18, has risen quickly to prominence. Henrique has never ridden outside Brazil, and his skills will be tested by the idiosyncratic Happy Valley course.

But so will those of the other riders. Happy Valley provides a great setting for this sort of competition as a tight, irregularly configured course that rewards technical precision and quick thinking, Luck also will play a major role – the luck of the draw, and the luck of the mount, with the dozen riders randomly assigned mounts in four handicap races.

The jockey competition races are the fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth, and the top three finishers in them are awarded 12, six, and four points respectively. The leading point earner at competition’s end takes home a $64,000 prize. Second place is worth a little less than $26,000, third place a little less than $13,000.

Race 5 is a one-turn sprint over 1000 meters, while races 4,7, and 8 will be contested over 1650 meters, about one circuit of the Happy Valley course, which is bordered by apartment buildings on its north end and is nestled at the foot of Mount Cameron on the edge of the bustling Wan Lai district.

The competition’s final leg, race 8, is the highest-class of the sequence, for horses rated 60-80, and it has nothing that looks like a standout. Bowman, whose mounts have decent draws throughout the four races as he seeks his second straight IJC championship, rides Bullish Smart, who looks a potentially key player for trainer Tony Cruz. Moreira is stuck out in post 10 with Razor Quest, one off three outside draws his mounts have in the competition.

The last IJC race has a scheduled post time of 9:10 a.m. Eastern, while the first of the IJC races goes at 7:40 Eastern on a card that begins at 5:30.