Waikuku seeks Beauty Generation's crown in Chairman's Trophy Stakes

Beauty Generation does his best work at the front of the pack and for well more than a year has been the top-rated horse in Hong Kong. Waikuku does his running late in the game, and he is coming hard for Beauty Generation’s place atop the Hong Kong mile division.

In fact, 5-year-old Waikuku might already have overtaken Beauty Generation in that position. Waikuku finished second, 1 1/4 lengths ahead of third-place Beauty Generation in the Hong Kong Mile on Dec. 8 and beat him a neck winning the Group 1 Stewards Cup over 1,600 meters a month later. Beauty Generation swung back into action and won the 1,400-meter Queen’s Silver Jubilee for the third year in a row on Feb. 16, and on Sunday at Sha Tin he faces Waikuku again in the Group 2, $548,270 Chairman’s Trophy Stakes over 1,600 meters.

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The Chairman’s Trophy shares top billing on a 10-race, spectator-free Sha Tin card with the Group 2, $548,270 Sprint Cup, featuring Aethero and Hot King Prawn. Both races are preps for Group 1’s at the end of April and will be run on a card that starts at 12:45 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. The Chairman’s Cup is race 3, post time 1:45, and the Sprint Cup race 7, post time 4:10.

Wet weather has swirled around Hong Kong this week, and the forecast Sunday doesn’t rule out more rain, and the prospect of a wet turf course is about the only hope any of the other five Chairman’s Trophy entrants have of beating Beauty Generation and Waikuku. In the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, Beauty Generation was allowed to drop back to third before pouncing on rivals not as good as Waikuku and pulling away to a half-length victory. That marked Beauty Generation’s first win since the Group 3 Celebration Cup on Oct. 1, the last in Beauty Generation’s 10-race winning streak that included a perfect 2018-19 season during which he won four Group 1’s. It’s not like Beauty Generation’s form has fallen off a cliff – he is still a very high-level performer – but his Hong Kong rating has sunk from a top of 138 down to 131 coming into Sunday’s weight-for-age race.

Beauty Generation had a nice 1,600-meter turf training race on March 13, but Waikuku looked even better in his March 26 1,200-meter dirt barrier trial under regular rider Joao Moreira. Waikuku traveled strongly while never asked, looking just as sharp as the horse who rallied to run down Beauty Generation in the Steward’s Cup.

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While Hot King Prawn at 127 is the highest-rated horse in the Sprint Cup, most eyes will focus on Aethero, a rare 3-year-old (on Southern Hemisphere time) to ascend to the highest levels in Hong Kong racing. Trained by John Moore and to be ridden Sunday by Zac Purton, Aethero, brilliantly fast, has won 5 of 7 Hong Kong starts, and while in some sense he disappointed as the heavy favorite Dec. 8 in the Hong Kong Sprint, his first Group 1 foray, it wasn’t Aethero’s fault he was bet down to heavy favoritism while being asked to do so much, so quickly by Hong Kong standards.

“The Hong Kong Sprint came earlier in his career than would normally have been ideal,” Moore told Hong Kong Jockey Club publicity this week.

Aethero led the Hong Kong Sprint most of the way before being collared by Beat the Clock and Hot King Prawn, beaten two necks, and came out of the race with a temperature, Moore said. Four months later, Aethero is fresh, happy, and healthy again, his connections believe, and he gets four pounds from his older rivals in Sunday’s 1,200-meter race.

Five-year-old Hot King Prawn has raced three times since his fine second in the Hong Kong Sprint and comes off a course-and-distance handicap win over Thanks Forever and Mr. Stunning, both of whom meet him again Sunday.