Skip to main content

Mid Winter Wind winnning the Byerley Turk (Candiese Lenferna Photography) 

The former Sean Tarry-trained Mid Winter Wind makes his Hong Kong debut on Friday in the tenth race of the Chinese New Year meeting, a Class 3 race over 1200m.

He will be an important horse as he was able to get out of South Africa via a direct flight to Europe and so his fortunes will be watched by overseas buyers. The SA-breds in Hong Kong have generally been disappointing in recent times, but that might have been due to the arduous journey from South Africa via Mauritius taking a lot out of them. Mid Winter Wind will be the first SA-bred import over there since direct flights were reinstated and he might be worth following for punters too.

The What A Winter gelding was bred by Drakenstein Stud and raced for them in South Africa, with a win in the Gr 3 Byerley Turk over 1400m at Hollywoodbets Greyville being one of his four victories in nine starts.

He gained some infamy by being a central figure in the controversy about the merit rating accorded to Green With Envy after his Gr 1 Daily News 2000 win, as he was made the line horse despite having never run over more than 1600m before.

The protesting faction felt Green With Envy’s merit rating was too high and the handicappers informing them that it would have been even higher unless they had made Mid Winter Wind the line horse seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Mid Winter Wind is out of the former Gr 1 Thekwini winner, the Dynasty mare Lady In Black, who was runner up in the Gr 1 Paddock Stakes twice, runner up in the Gr 1 Majorca Stakes and a narrow third in the Gr 1 Woolavington 2000.

Mid Winter is now owned by James Lau Po Man & Alice Woo Wai See.

He is trained by Mark Newnham and will be fittingly ridden by Luke Ferraris on Friday from a fair draw of seven out of 14.

Mid Winter Wind started his training regime out there in October last year and he has had four barrier trials since.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH HIS LAST BARRIER TRIAL