HONG KONG - There is more to being a rock star than knowing how to sing, as jockey Stewart Elliott showed this week when he returned to his boyhood home only to finish last in the Hong Kong International Jockeys’ Challenge at Happy Valley Racecourse.

Elliott, who rocketed to fame earlier this year when he and Smarty Jones pursued the Triple Crown, was back on a plane to the United States the day after Wednesday’s competition, happy to have been invited as the lone American representative in the contest but disappointed in having hit a sour note. 

He had wanted to do well in Hong Kong, where he lived in the 1970s when his father, Dennis, was riding at Happy Valley. Instead, he finished 12th of 12 jockeys in the competition, managing showings of ninth, a 10th, and an 11th in the three-race contest.

It was the first trip back to Hong Kong for Elliott, who as a boy lived on a hill overlooking the racetrack and attended the nearby Island School. He was a last-minute replacement for last year’s runner-up in the competition, Victor Espinoza, and Hong Kong greeted him with open arms. If ever a situation called for a storybook conclusion, this would have been it.

Fans are thrilled
There was obvious excitement among the racing fans at Happy Valley for Elliott to overcome his lack of experience in international competition.  But from the minute he was introduced to the crowd and took his place on the red carpet next to a bigger-than-life photo of his face, one could sense that he was thrust into the muddle of greatness. How difficult a place that can be.

Elliott’s competitors included Yutaka Take, the perennial Japanese champion, and Christophe Soumillion, leading rider in France, who tied for the championship by riding a winner and a third-place finisher apiece in the contest.  Other riders in the field included  Mick Kinane of England, Kieran Fallon of Ireland, Damien Oliver of Australia, Andreas Suborics of Germany and Hong Kong’s leading rider, Douglas Whyte.

From outward appearances, Elliott fit in.  He chatted amiably with the other riders on the presentation stand, while fronting the American flag.  He preened for the cameras, tossed souvenirs into the stands when the moment called for him to be a pitchman, and acted the part of a worthy participant.  Then, the races began.

Elliott’s first mount, Best For All, was expected to fare better than his tenth place finish.  Elliott gunned his second mount, Progressing Times, to the lead a la Smarty Jones, but the 4-year-old faded under pressure and ended up ninth.  In the last race of the competition, Elliott rode an overmatched Rising Win to a dismal eleventh, accounting for no points at all.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t be here in Hong Kong if it weren’t for Smarty Jones,” Elliott told the South China Morning Post, acknowledging the role this year’s charismatic Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner played in his ascendance to recognition, and, perhaps, the last-minute invitation.

‘A lot more buildings’
“One thing that does strike me is that there are a lot more buildings here now,” he said, peering from the Happy Valley grandstand to the high rises that rocket up from the streets just outside the racetrack. Was this a metaphor for the task at hand?  Elliott squeezed in a tour of the neighborhood where he grew up in the afternoon before the competition. “Up the top there – I think that’s where we lived – Shui Fai Terrace it was,” he said, pointing out a spot on the backstretch.

The 39-year-old Elliott was a mere lad when his father moved his tack to Hong Kong to work as a stable rider for the Australian trainer Bob Burns.  Dennis Elliott came from Canada to Hong Kong with his brother Bobby, who finished runner-up in the very first Hong Kong Jockeys’ Challenge in the 1971-72 season of Happy Valley.  He won 40 races in six different seasons from 1972-1973 until 1976-1977.

“Dad had a boat and we would go water skiing,” the jockey recalled, noting that the sport was under-developed in those days and the Elliotts had time on their hands.  “It was a lot of fun,” he said.

The International Jockeys’ Challenge aside, Elliott seems to be having a lot of fun these days, too. John Servis, the trainer of Smarty Jones, has put him aboard another rocketship of a horse, and it is causing Elliott to think that lightning can strike twice.  The horse’s name is Rockport Harbor and he is undefeated in four tries.  He is a recent winner of The Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct and Servis is pointing him to Louisville via Oaklawn, the same road traveled by Smarty Jones.

It will probably take another Kentucky Derby win for Elliott to get another invitation to ride in Hong Kong, but as Jim Morrison of The Doors once replied when told that he’d never be asked to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” again after singing a lyric he promised not to sing: “I’ve done that already. Why would I want to do it again?”

Now that’s being a rock star. 

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