Saffie Osborne’s year began with a ride on a 150-1 chance in a race worth £7,000 at Wolverhampton on 6 January, when she trailed in last of the seven runners. Its final chapter will open on Sunday in the decidedly glitzier surroundings of Sha Tin racecourse in Hong Kong, where Osborne has 10 rides on an 11-race card, and the 10 months in between have been transformational for the 24-year-old jockey. A first top-10 finish in the Flat jockeys’ championship was the reward for Osborne’s consistency throughout the May-to-October title race, but the undoubted highlight was her victory on Highwayman victory in the St Leger in September.
It was Osborne’s first Group One win, and also the first for a female jockey in a British Classic. It was a historic success that surely contributed to the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s decision to offer Osborne a six-week pre-Christmas riding contract a couple of weeks later. Hong Kong’s punters, meanwhile, may be drawn to another key feature of her 2026 season: the consistency with which Osborne’s mounts have outperformed their odds.
Her 85 wins from 600 rides since from the start of 2026 returned a level-stakes profit of £31.81, while during the six-month championship race, the profit to a £1 stake was just under £100. In a racing hotbed that is focused entirely on betting, anything even close to that level of success would make Osborne an immediate star. Hong Kong’s racing industry does not have a breeding industry attached.
Instead, its runners are imported from around the world, and 99% are geldings, which are easier to train, show more consistent form and tend to enjoy longer careers than “entire” male horses. Around 97% of its races, meanwhile, are handicaps, with full fields of either 12 or 14 runners (and a couple of reserves to ensure that any late gaps are filled). Osborne will make her riding debut at Sha Tin, which stages racing every Sunday during the season, but had her first experience of Hong Kong’s famously intense racecourse atmosphere at Happy Valley on Wednesday evening.
It’s an amazing atmosphere and a really unique track, and to be in the middle of such a vibrant city was very cool.” While Sha Tin is a broad, galloping track with sweeping turns that suits a long-striding horse, Happy Valley is a famously compact venue surrounded by skyscrapers, with tight turns and a high premium on getting a good early position. So you have to learn quickly, and I think that’s something that will stand me in good stead here.” Such is the popularity of racing in Hong Kong that would-be owners need to join a waiting list, while 88 meetings over the course of last season generated $HK143bn (£13.5bn) in Tote betting turnover and a gross profit – after returning around 86% to the winners – of $HK20bn (£1.9bn). Being so light, I can do bottom weight [of 8st 3lb], and that’s something that’s helped me a lot in the UK and hopefully it can help me here.” Hollie Doyle and Rossa Ryan will be two familiar faces riding alongside Osborne over the next few weeks, while Richard Kingscote, Harry Bentley and Andrea Atzeni are among former leading riders in Britain that are now based in Hong Kong full-time.
Her most formidable rival, though, will be Australia’s Zac Purton, who finished well clear in last year’s standings to claim his ninth championship, ahead of Hugh Bowman, Atzeni and Karis Teetan. And only being 24 and [in] my sixth year riding, you’re still trying to learn as much as possible. [Hong Kong] has such world-class jockeys, so you just pick up things off of them.” The November Handicap has not had a dual winner in its 150-year history, but both Lord Melbourne and Castle Cove (3.25), the winners in the past two seasons, are back for another crack at Doncaster on Saturday and William Haggas’s gelding is a decent bet at around 9-1 to register a small piece of racing history. Neither horse has run since last year’s renewal, when Castle Cove was an easy four-and-a-quarter length winner with Lord Melbourne only sixth.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
