Origin of QE II Cup

The first QE II Cup held on 5 May 1975 commemorated the visit to Hong Kong by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. About 40,000 people were at Happy Valley for the race and Club Chairman, The Hon. P G Williams, and other Stewards greeted the Royal Couple.

The win by outsider Nazakat gave the race an international flavour, since the winning owner, Mr & Mrs H T Barma, were Hong Kong Indian residents, the trainer, H M Cheung, was local Chinese, and the jockey, A K Cheam, was Singaporean.

The Queen returned to Hong Kong in 1986 and was present on 22 October to award the QE II Cup trophy at Sha Tin racecourse. The royal renewal was won by the 20-1 outsider Forever Gold (by Whistling Deer), an English Private Purchase owned by Mr & Mrs E C Lowe and trained by G Smyth and ridden by P H Chan.

Audemars Piguet QE II Cup entered International Gp. 1 in 2001

The QE II Cup was just a local Class 1 or 2 handicap race from the 1970s to 1980s. In the 1990s, the increasing importance and popularity of the Hong Kong International Races, the QE II Cup became an international open race carrying for the first time a local Group 1 status in 1995. . Four years later, Audemars Piguet entered into a sponsorship agreement with the Hong Kong Jockey Club and Audemars Piguet was added to the race name. In the same year, the Cup was granted International Group 2 status by the International Cataloguing Standards Committee.

In 2001, the race was elevated to International Group 1 and the following year gained inclusion in the now defuct World Racing Championships (former World Series Racing Championship) .

Prize money for the race increases 280 times

Prize money for the Audemars Piguet QE II Cup has been rising dramatically since the humble beginning in the 1974/75 season. It started off as a race offering a small sum of HK$50,000 in 1975 but the sponsorship of Audemars Piguet saw the prize money shot up to HK$5.35 million in 1999. Ten years down the road, the purse money of the AP QE II Cup stands at HK$14 million or 280 times what it was in 1975.

To attract the most competitive horses to the Audemars Piguet QE II Cup, the Hong Kong Jockey Club introduced in the 1999/2000 season a HK$1 million bonus for the owner of any horse that wins one of the four Hong Kong International Races (Hong Kong Cup / Hong Kong Mile / Hong Kong Vase / Hong Kong Sprint) and then go on to win the Audemars Piguet QE II Cup in the same season.

In April 2000, French contender, Jim And Tonic, was eligible for the bonus after capturing the International Group 1 Hong Kong Cup in December 1999. The Audemars Piguet QE II Cup ended in a dramatic photo finish when rising local star Industrialist defeated Jim And Tonic by a short head and became the first locally trained horse to win the race since it obtained international group status.

The first winner of the bonus was Japanese contender Eishin Preston, who defeated another Japanese horse, Agnes Digital, by half a length to win the Cup in April 2002, after capturing the Hong Kong Mile (International G1-1600M) four months earlier.