How a champ can go from red hot to ice cold

It’s a “miss list” – as opposed to a hit list – and it terrifies some of the bravest, most talented, jockeys in the world.

Every jockey has out-of-form runs and the trick is to keep plugging away until fortunes change. In Hong Kong, not so much. Unless a jockey is winning regularly, he quickly descends to the dreaded Cold List. Which is when trainers stop taking calls from him as he casts about desperately for a decent ride and a change of luck.

Ask Lyle Hewitson, South Africa’s brilliant champion jockey, about the culture shock of Hong Kong racing. Or his fellow shooting stars Callan Murray and Richard Fourie. Or even old master Piere Strydom. All have gone to the island in the South China Sea and galloped headlong into a typhoon of adversity.

By contrast, other South African jockeys – Douglas Whyte, Basil Marcus, Robbie Fradd, Felix Coetzee and Bartie Leisher – have found the wind at their backs and have become legends in that racing-crazy corner of the world. Indeed, Saffers have won the jockey championship there more than 20 times in the past 33 years.

Cue Hewitson, fresh from a hotly contested second South African title victory with 219 winners, getting a licence from the Hong Kong Jockey Club for the current season. Eight weeks into the season one would have expected young Lyle to have garnered a win or two. No. He’s had 30 rides at Happy Valley and Sha Tin racecourse for the grand total of zero places.

Only one of his 30 mounts has started at a single-figure price. When you’re cold, you’re cold.

Murray, the likely next superstar to emerge from Mzansi, had a rather similar experience last season – eventually losing his Hong Kong licence.

Fourie rode 34 winners in Hong Kong in 2013-14, but returned home to pursue the cherished local championship. That ambition was dashed on the rocks of injury, so he went back to Hong Kong in 2015 with a season-long licence and high expectations. But something had changed and he battled – cutting short his gig after just six wins in six months.

Interestingly, in 2013, the rider who replaced Fourie on the 23-strong Hong Kong riding roster was South African-trained Mauritian Karis Teetan, who immediately began shooting the lights out in the lightweight division and is now one of the top dogs.

Strydom has had a few Hong Kong stints, with some success but a notable five-month horror-show in 2013 when not one horse he rode was a favourite and he managed just six victories.

Back then it was “Durban Demon” Whyte and Brett Prebble who dominated in Hong Kong, nowadays it is a Big Three of Teetan, Australian Zac Purton and Brazilian Joao Moreira. This week that trio had 11, 13 and 17 successes, respectively.

In a few weeks’ time, ex-British champion Sylvestre de Sousa will arrive for his annual busman’s holiday in Hong Kong, making things even tougher for young Hewitson and a phalanx of other excellent jockeys – like Neil Callan, Umberto Rispoli and Derek Leung – who are struggling to keep heads above water.

The big problem is that “jocking off” is a fact of life in a jurisdiction where big money rules. Owners and trainers do not stay loyal to riders who help to bring horses to full fitness and form. As soon as a nag is ready to win, the Big Three (or Four) ask for the engagement – and one of them gets it, with owners insisting on the form man or the lucky man.

Hewitson is said to be working very hard on the gallops, building relationships, and he will take heart from the fact that his countrymen and rivals Grant van Niekerk and Aldo Domeyer are in the pack chasing the Big Three – with four and three wins apiece. If they can do it…

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