\u201cHe\u2019s a Triple Crown winner, he thoroughly deserved it,\u201d McDonald, who had ridden a Group 1 winner with Birdman in the Doomben Cup just 27 hours earlier in Brisbane, said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI read an article, the boss [Hong Kong Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht Bresges] said he was already an immortal and I totally agree with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t need to win this to be that. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is the cherry on top \u2013 he should be Horse of the Year this year and I think he stamped that by winning the Triple Crown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore the race we already set up the plan \u2013 put him to sleep, let him relax, and try to hit the front. He hit the line in the last 400m, so James has done a great job, he\u2019s [a] top-class jockey,\u201d trainer Danny Shum said.<\/p>\n
Settling fourth behind Numbers and Romantic Thor, Romantic Warrior worked into the race under the unflappable McDonald before the reigning world\u2019s best jockey stoked up the eight-year-old deep into the straight and overhauled Numbers at the 50m mark before edging clear.<\/p>\n
Numbers fought tigerishly to hold off Deep Monster as Romantic Warrior rattled home in 22.77s, extending his winning range at Group 1 level from 1600m to 2400m.<\/p>\n
Shum is considering sending the Hong Kong International Sale graduate to Conghua, the Hong Kong Jockey Club\u2019s training facility in mainland China, for the first time before identifying next season\u2019s targets with the winner of 24 races from 31 starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan is to give him a break. I will think about whether to send him to Conghua, same as Ka Ying Rising \u2013 Ka Ying Rising is very happy [there]. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo I might send him to Conghua, give him a little break and then see how he goes,\u201d Shum said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re happy because we have a very good team and stable. Peter [Lau] always makes the right decisions and James McDonald is a very good jockey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zac Purton edged closer to the 2,000-win milestone in Hong Kong with a treble.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all right. I was hoping to ride one or two today, so three was better than expected,\u201d Purton said after notching his 1998th Hong Kong win.<\/p>\n
Shum\u2019s double boosted his seasonal tally to 56 wins, leading Caspar Fownes (54), Mark Newnham (52), Francis Lui (50), David Hayes (49) and John Size (46) in the race for the trainers\u2019 title.<\/p>\n
New Zealand-based stallion Wrote continued his great run in Hong Kong by siring the first two winners on the programme.<\/p>\n
\u2013 extra reporting Hong Kong Jockey Club<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe\u2019s a Triple Crown winner, he thoroughly deserved it,\u201d McDonald, who had ridden a Group 1 winner with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[95,9526,2046,6028,8615,4187,10808,17827,14568,14054,12815,194,19550,31271,111,139,69,3512,8213,23334,213,1961,2044,27561,34807,6027,377,80],"class_list":["post-444470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-and","tag-another","tag-career","tag-champion","tag-come","tag-cost","tag-crown","tag-highlight","tag-horse","tag-james","tag-jockey","tag-kiwi","tag-mammoth","tag-mcdonald","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-recorded","tag-romantic","tag-sports","tag-this","tag-time","tag-triple","tag-warrior","tag-win","tag-world","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}