Britney Wong at the Te Rapa trials last week.
Apprentice jockey Britney Wong should try to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of making her New Zealand race riding debut on the Cambridge synthetic today.
Because in a couple of weeks her days at the races are going to look completely different.
The 25-year-old jockey has three rides today in the almost trials-like atmosphere of a Cambridge Wednesday meeting as part of three weeks in New Zealand to gain more experience.
Wong has already ridden 50 winners in South Australia, where she spent two years to hone her skills, but has now been licenced to ride in one of the great hotbeds of world racing, her native Hong Kong.
It is hard enough for any jockey to get licenced in Hong Kong but fulltime female riders there are incredibly rare, the last one being Kei Chiong in 2017.
Chiong also spent time riding in New Zealand before becoming one of the faces of Hong Kong racing in 2016, when at one whirlwind meeting she rode four winners.
She was both social media star and sadly, as a female, the centre of more pointed abuse from grizzled old punters not used to seeing a woman in the saddle in the Sha Tin parade ring.
Chiong retired in 2017 and now runs her own bloodstock consultancy business.
Now it is Wong’s turn to follow in her racing footsteps, maybe the only jockey in the world who at most meetings will have a jockey’s room all to herself.
“It is quite surreal,” admits Wong.
“To be riding against so many great riders there is going to be amazing and I am going to try to learn all the time.”
Wong earned a good reputation in South Australia and the Hong Kong Jockey Club often sends its apprentices here to gain experience, with Wong under the guidance here of former top jockey Leith Innes, now apprentice mentor at the NZ Equine Academy.
“Britney can ride, she could end up being a superstar,” says Innes.
Wong has been in the country over a week and will ride today and hopefully at Ruakākā on Saturday if any local trainers want to use her 2kgs allowance, then again next week before returning home for the start of the Hong Kong season on September 8.
She will be apprentice to David Hall and the few hundred who meander in and out of the Cambridge track today will seem a distant memory very quickly in front of the punt-crazed fans of Sha Tin or Happy Valley.
While the learning curve may be steep, a quick chat with Wong confirms she has the demeanour to match her tidyness in the saddle, a smile being one of the best weapons to disarm disgruntled punters.
Wong has found the ideal partner for her first New Zealand race ride in Ranger (R4, No 11), the 8-year-old having been around Cambridge plenty of times and being a jump-and-run type horse from barrier four.
Wong won’t be the only relative newcomer to New Zealand racing on show today as Australian rider Matt Cartwright will go head to head with her in the $60,000 Richard Bright Memorial, Cartwright on Agera who gave him his first New Zealand win at Te Rapa on Saturday.
Cartwright only moved to New Zealand to test the waters last week and will partner the Tony Pike-trained gelding again as he backs up just four days after winning.
Both horses are in the $60,000 feature race that remembers the much-loved publican and racing owner Bright, who tragically died two years ago when the fishing charter Enchanter sunk.
Today’s meeting will also see the return of champion jockey Opie Bosson for his first ride after his annual winter break, Bosson having just one ride as he works towards getting down to his required riding weight for the mammoth season ahead.
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.