Who is Francis Lui?
Francis Lui Kin-wai is one of Hong Kong’s leading trainers, as well as one of its longest serving, and he has risen to new heights of achievement in the past few seasons. For many years he was a middling trainer with few high-class horses to speak of but he patiently built his reputation as a solid pair of hands. That platform has enabled him to climb up the ranks to become a consistent top three finisher in the Hong Kong standings and he is pushing hard for a first champion trainer title.
What are Francis Lui’s origins?
Lui got his first break in horse racing when he was accepted to the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s apprentice jockey school in the early 1970s. He began race riding as an apprentice in 1975 and continued, with limited success, until 1982. He had 36 wins during that time as a low-key jockey. Upon his retirement from race riding he worked his way through the Jockey Club system to become an assistant trainer, and then in 1996 he was granted a licence to oversee his own stable.
For the first two decades of his training career, Lui had modest success and nailed only three Group race wins. The first came with Shaanxi Fortune in the 2001 Sha Tin Trophy, at that time designated a local Group 3; Hello Pretty followed in the 2006 Hong Kong Derby Trial, and in 2008 the stable’s Sunny Power won the Sha Tin Vase. But his fortunes began to change in the mid-to-latter part of the 2010s.
What is Francis Lui’s best horse?
The best horse Francis Lui has trained, and perhaps ever will train, is the outstanding champion Golden Sixty. Lui sourced the Medaglia d’Oro gelding in New Zealand and guided him through his early career with astuteness and care.
Golden Sixty won 19 of his first 20 races and advanced readily through the handicap system to win all three legs of the Hong Kong Four-Year-Old Series, culminating in the Hong Kong Derby. Unbeaten in that four-year-old campaign, Lui guided his charge as a five-year-old to repeat the feat of going unbeaten through an entire season when he won the G1 Hong Kong Mile, G1 Stewards’ Cup, G1 Hong Kong Gold Cup, and G1 Champions Mile.
Lui has since trained his all-time great to win the Hong Kong Mile and the Champions Mile three times apiece, and earn a Hong Kong record in prize money of HK$167,170,600.
What is Francis Lui’s greatest achievement?
His ability to overcome the perception that he was merely a second-string trainer behind the mighty expatriate trainers and Tony Cruz, and rise to prominence, was some feat; so too was his calm ability to guide Golden Sixty through such an all-conquering career spanning six seasons. But his greatest was preparing Golden Sixty to win the 2023 running of the Hong Kong Mile without a prep race.
The champion was eight years old by that time and had not raced since his Champions Mile victory the previous April. Lui used his decades-long accumulation of knowledge and good judgement to have his old warrior fit and sharp to defeat top-class rivals from home and abroad.
What was his claim to fame before Golden Sixty?
Before Golden Sixty came along Francis Lui was famous for training the elite sprinter Lucky Bubbles. The little chestnut boosted Lui’s profile with a trio of Group race wins, notably the 2017 running of the G1 Chairman’s Sprint Prize.
