Hong Kong racing fans, and connections of Golden Sixty, are not the only ones hoping for another scintillating performance from Hong Kong’s Horse of the Year in the LONGINES Hong Kong Mile. International handicappers will also be delighted if Golden Sixty can put daylight between himself and his Sha Tin rivals in his quest for a race hat-trick.

That is the view of Dominic Gardiner-Hill, who co-chairs the LONGINES World’s Best Racehorse Rankings committee with the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Head of Handicapping, Race Planning and International Racing Nigel Gray and Tom Robbins, Chairman of the North American Ratings Committee.

They and colleagues from major racing jurisdictions around the globe will shortly gather in a Zoom conference to put the finishing touches to the 2022 rankings and Gardiner-Hill is in no doubt about the importance of overseas participation at LONGINES HKIR from the handicappers’ point of view.

“It brings top European form to the table to put alongside Hong Kong form,” he says, “But probably most importantly in recent years, it has brought Japanese form to the forefront of our attention.

“Gathering all this together, with the occasional runner from Australia and Singapore, gives us a real chance to compare horses from different regions of the world and to put our ratings levels to the test, so that we can ensure we have got them in line. One of the rankings committee’s aims in recent years has been to bring stability to the ratings levels around the world and the LONGINES HKIR have played a big part in that.”

Gardiner-Hill adds: “The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is still being felt, because there is no runner from Britain this year and numbers from Ireland and the rest of Europe are down a little from pre-2019, which is slightly frustrating from the handicappers’ perspective, but the LONGINES HKIR still represent the last chance for horses to influence the end-of-season ratings that are published in January.”

In the case of Golden Sixty, who is currently rated one point below a mark of 125 that last year brought him the accolade of the world’s joint highest-rated miler with Baeed and Palace Pier, he has amassed his record of 22 wins from 25 races entirely at Sha Tin, including a remarkable unbeaten run of 16 between September 2019 and December last year.

Gardiner-Hill is familiar with the criticism from afar, saying: “It’s the same question that was asked about Frankel, who never ran outside England. At least the latest European superstar Baaeed had a race in France on his record. It would have been great to see Frankel go abroad or to have seen Sea The Stars campaigned as a four-year-old, but our job is purely about performance and the relativity of one horse with their counterparts within a generation.

“We are assessing performance and all we can do is to measure that against the horses they beat. There are other awards that recognise such as longevity and distances travelled to race, but we have to provide a numerical representation of a horse’s best form at a particular distance.”

Golden Sixty’s numerical representation in 2021 made him the joint third-best locally-trained horse since 1998, when Hong Kong was first represented in what has become the LONGINES World’s Best Racehorse Rankings. He shares a 125 rating with Classique Legend, two points behind Able Friend and Beauty Generation.

Gardiner-Hill says: “Golden Sixty is one of those horses who, by the way he is ridden, I’m not sure is ever going to win by very far. In fact, he has never won by more than two lengths, and even then, that’s not happened very often. Whether he’s ever going to put three, four or five lengths between himself and the opposition, which would elevate his rating automatically into the high-120s, is very much a matter for conjecture. I’d love to see it happen, of course.

“He’s rated 124 on the basis of his last outing In the BOCHK Private Wealth Jockey Club Mile, where he beat California Spangle and Waikuku and, with them taking him on again, if Golden Sixty were to beat them by a half decent distance, there’s every chance he could improve on that rating.”

Elsewhere, Gardiner-Hill is looking forward to assessing the Japanese challenge. “You often get at least one of the horses from Japan that runs its best race here,” he says, “Because it will be running against international competition for probably the first time, instead of just taking on domestic horses.

“One of the most interesting contenders this year is Panthalassa in the LONGINES Hong Kong Cup. He dead-heated with Lord North in the Dubai Turf at Meydan in March, his first race outside Japan, which gave him an international rating of 121. He nearly pinched the Tenno Sho (Autumn) the other week, when he was only caught and passed in the last half-furlong. It might suit him down to the ground if he can get to the front and kick off round the bends at Sha Tin.”

That’s as close to a selection as we will get from the handicappers’ panel!