Win Chung Lai-Fong is an inconspicuous figure at Sha Tin. She goes about her tasks wearing the blue uniform of a Hong Kong Jockey Club stable assistant and has worked for trainer Me Tsui for the past eight years. When her daily duties are complete, she heads to her home, which she shares with her husband, a practice manager in the Club’s veterinary department.
There is much value in Chung’s work, and at the core of it all is her love for the horses, but she is much more than she appears to be. She is a living piece of Hong Kong racing history and an important one at that: she is a history maker, in fact.
Her name is little known outside of her home city and not mentioned enough within it. She made her indelible mark on September 24, 1994 in the Hornell Hall Handicap, a 1000-metre dash down the Sha Tin straight. Chung was an apprentice jockey, riding a gelding trained by the late Bruce Hutchison named Free Zone.
The white-faced chestnut was, like its rider, unconsidered on the day: a 35-1 chance in the field of 11 despite having won its previous start, albeit six months earlier. Back then, punters considered a girl in the saddle to be a red flag, after all, no female had won a race in Hong Kong in the nine months since Sherie Kong became the first to try in December 1993 and placed last of eight aboard Jade Signet.
In an open Class 2 contest it was Fukien Boy, the mount of champion jockey Basil Marcus, that went off a weak favourite, but as the runners entered the final furlong, those punters began to rue the prejudice in their selection strategy. Free Zone was closing with smooth momentum under Chung’s basic hands and heels, and passed the favourite to win by a head.
“There wasn’t any expectation on me at all,” Chung recalls. “Everyone was surprised.”
That included herself. There was no outward emotion on the 19-year-old’s face as she crossed the line, both hands holding the reins.
“I was in shock,” she says. “I was very excited, happy and satisfied, I felt successful. As I passed the finish line, I looked left and right; the first thought I had was not that I was the first woman to win a race, but in that moment, it was just the excitement that I had won a race.”
A beaming grin broke out at the pull-up as the likes of a smiling John Marshall and Darren Gauci offered their congratulations, and the wider importance began to sink in.
“Sherie had started racing three months earlier than me and she had a lot of placed horses but never a winner. I remember I had only 12 races and then I got the winner so it really was a surprise to be the first female to win in Hong Kong,” she says.
Kong says it was “fair” that Chung had the first winner given that she herself had the first ride and went on to be the first woman to ride a double.