But McDonald has his own Hong Kong champion in Romantic Warrior, who, two hours after the Sprint, received the same booming ovation as he raced to a record fourth straight Hong Kong Cup (2000m).
The pair are visually different, Ka Ying Rising looking like one of the giant teenagers who is just too big, strong and fast for the other kids at the school sports.
Romantic Warrior isn’t as physically imposing but his super power is his sheer relentlessness.
His opponents run up to him but rarely past him and when fatigue and lactic acid take their toll on inferior horses, Romantic Warrior just keeps going, a horse seemingly without a memory or a pain threshold.
In winning his fourth straight Cup, Romantic Warrior joins a very elite club of horses to win the same Group 1 in four straight years, the most obvious for Downunder fans being Winx in the Cox Plate.
After the race, McDonald was speechless, almost overcome by the emotion he feels when he rides Romantic Warrior.
That love has gone to a new level this campaign though as Romantic Warrior has come back from winter surgery to be just as imperious at an age when most horses would be slowing down, let alone one with the miles he has in his legs.
But that admiration for his best ever horse wasn’t the only reason McDonald could barely talk after the Cup cruise.
The New Zealand wonder jockey is exhausted, yesterday’s meeting his last for a few weeks, and he and his family head back to Sydney tomorrow to rest after a quite unbelievable year of major races wins across the world.
Romantic Warrior’s win was the fitting exclamation mark on the year McDonald was again crowned the World’s Best Jockey.
Hong Kong punter’s pin-up boy Purton doubled down on International Race success by also claiming the Hong Kong Mile on Voyage Bubble, who defended his title from last year.
An unassuming galloper, Voyage Bubble is a magnificent athlete and in plenty of other eras would be the darling of the Hong Kong racing public.
Unfortunately for him, he lives in a time of giants.
For all the champions on display yesterday you could argue maybe the one least known to Kiwi race fans might almost be the greatest of them all.
French trainer Andre Fabre won his fourth Hong Kong Vase, the 2400m staying Group 1, with Sosie, who was brave holding off his rivals in a stop-start affair.
That it was Fabre’s fourth training success in the Vase, coming in the week he turned 80, just adds to a storied career highlighted by the fact he has been France’s leading trainer a scarcely believable 30 times.
To add to the Kiwi flavour, New Zealand trainer Jamie Richards won the third race with Cool Boy, a Per Incanto half-brother to former top galloper Brando.
Cool Boy was a Karaka yearling sales purchase for Richards and another highlight on a day New Zealand did itself proud on one of world racing’s biggest stages.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
