Kerang’s jockey superstar Jye McNeil was suspended at Sale on Sunday, costing him a shot at another Melbourne Cup ride and throwing his spring racing plans into disarray ahead of his six-week trip to Hong Kong from November 7.
McNeil bookended the nine-race card at Sale but after he won the first on Knight Jar he was suspended from midnight this Saturday until the conclusion of the Seymour meeting on November 11.
He had pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless riding after he shifted into the path of Grande Baie at the 150m mark.
“It’s the highs and the lows of racing,” a philosophical McNeil said.
It means McNeil will ride on Derby Day this Saturday and that will be the end of his 2022 spring campaign, as he will leave the country before his suspension is complete.
Hong Kong is perhaps the most intensive and competitive racing scene in the world and while McNeil has ridden in the Asian Young Guns Challenge in South Korea in 2015 and in the same series in Durban, South Africa, the year before, this is his first professional crack as a senior jockey.
Ironically, McNeil was approached by former Racing Victoria and now Hong Kong Jockey Club steward Terry Bailey about a short-term stint in Hong Kong.
The Kerang rider will become the third Australian on the jockey roster in Hong Kong, joining Zac Purton and Luke Currie.
McNeil said he was looking forward to the challenge in Hong Kong – where one of his first tasks will be trying to arrange rides for Sha Tin and Happy Valley as jockey managers are not allowed there.
“You have to find your rides at trackwork,” McNeil explains.
He said he had no concrete plans about outcomes from the trial as “there is a lot of water to go under that bridge between now and then”.
McNeil’s partner Jess Payne and their two-year-old son Oakley will be making the trip with him.
“It’s a great thing to look forward to for my family as well as me,” he said.
“I’ve always watched from afar but more intensely in the short term obviously, and really trying to gain a grasp of the different starts, the two different tracks and how they’re ridden,” he said.
“I’ll continue to do that from a distance and try to gain as much knowledge from the riders who have ridden those tracks before.”
The only trainer he knew in Hong Kong was David Hayes, so he will be putting in some hard yards getting trackwork and then converting that to starts at both tracks.
Whether the trip to the lucrative Hong Kong scene is also the precursor of a shift in direction for the 27-year-old, who has four Group 1 wins on his resume, including the 2020 Melbourne Cup with Twilight Payment, remained to be seen, but McNeil had no doubt it will have a positive impact on his riding.
“We don’t know what the future holds of course, but I’m going it to build my international experience and see what sort of improvements I can bring back in my riding,” he said.
“I’m sure I’ll keep a really open book as to what the future holds.”
McNeil believed his stellar 2021-22 season, which saw him win his first Melbourne jockeys’ premiership, played a big part in the approach to ride at Hong Kong.
And after a winless Cox Plate Saturday at Moonee Valley, McNeil got back in the victor’s circle at the Sale Cup meeting on Sunday.
His Knight Jar win was complemented with success in last of the day – the $40,000 Ladbrokes Mates Mode over 1200m – when he swept to the line more than three lengths clear of the field on the Robbie Griffiths and Matthew de Kock trained Najem Suhail.
