Golden Sixty extended his unbeaten sequence to thirteen straight wins when saluting in the G1 Citi Hong Kong Gold Cup at Sha Tin. It was his third consecutive Group 1 win and his sixteenth win from seventeen starts.
The short-head margin was the smallest winning margin of all of the victories that the Francis Lui trained runner has achieved.
Golden Sixty’s season return so far of six wins leaves him only two wins away from Beauty Generations standing record of eight wins in a season. Also, Golden Sixty has now won the first two legs of Hong Kong’s Triple Crown after claiming last month’s G1 Stewards’ Cup..
The third and final leg of the Triple Crown is the G1 Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup on 23 May and, if successful there, Golden Sixty would become the second horse after River Verdon (who got the job done in the 1993/94 racing season) to win the Triple Crown.
For trainer John Size it too was a very notable day.
The eleven-time Hong Kong Trainer’s Premiership winner scored a double on the day, his first winner, Waikuku, taking his total of winners trained in Hong Kong to a magnificent 1300.
Waikuku’s triumphed in the G1 Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup – the world’s richest 1400m race – and that win saw Size joining a very small club of trainers as John Moore (with 1735 wins) and Tony Cruz, (1329 winners) are the only other trainers to have prepared 1300 Hong Kong winners.
“It probably means I’ve been here a long time and I’m doing my job well,” said Size, who moved from Sydney to Hong Kong in 2001.
“Every achievement along the way in your career is meaningful.
“I couldn’t have imagined this in my wildest dreams.”
