Fownes tightens grip on Hong Kong trainers' title race at Happy Valley
Sky Cap’s 1000m win gave Caspar Fownes a five-win buffer, while Cody Mo’s treble from five runners kept Happy Valley swinging.
Caspar Fownes left Happy Valley with the 2025/26 Hong Kong trainers’ championship looking even harder for his rivals to catch. Sky Cap’s Class 3 Des Voeux Road Central Handicap victory over 1000 metres pushed Fownes to 64 wins, five clear of Danny Shum on 59, with Mark Newnham next on 58, Francis Lui on 54 and David Hayes on 52.
The shape of the calendar now works against the chasers. Only six meetings remained after June 24, and the final stretch included four Sha Tin cards and just two more at Happy Valley because of the Hong Kong Reunification Raceday at Sha Tin on Wednesday, July 1. That matters because Fownes has made Happy Valley his strongest hunting ground this season, with 43 winners there compared with 21 at Sha Tin.
Joao Moreira made the night count again for Fownes, steering Sky Cap to the bonus-paying win and collecting a PP Bonus of HK$1.5 million for the owners. Fownes said the horse had been dropped back to 1000 metres and that Moreira was asked to settle one out, one back, a plan that delivered cleanly enough to hold off the opposition. Moreira’s return as Fownes’ retained rider has been a major part of the title surge: he has now won 24 races since coming back, 21 of them for Fownes.
Fownes is chasing a fifth trainers’ crown after previous championships in 2006/07, 2008/09, 2013/14 and 2020/21. He also reached 628 career Happy Valley wins, the most in Hong Kong’s professional racing era, and the latest burst of form has made that record feel less like a milestone than a backdrop to another title run.
The other headline performance belonged to Cody Mo, who landed a treble from just five runners with Flying Fortune, Meowth and Jumbo Treasure. The haul lifted him to 45 wins for the campaign, a sharp rise from 20 in his first season and 40 in his second, and it showed that the stable’s progress is no longer a one-night spike but a steady climb.
Derek Leung, Luke Ferraris and other riders also had productive nights, with Ferraris closing the meeting aboard Definitive for David Eustace. But the bigger scoreboard belonged to Fownes: every winner now matters, and the latest Happy Valley card made the race for the trainers’ title much tighter for everybody except the leader.
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