Hard-line law enforcement officers in Brazil make no apology for their tough assessment of teenage gangs that operate in the heart of many of their cities.
When they speak of the life that awaits these confused, abused and ruthless teenagers, one soon pictures the gravity of what goes on in the streets and suburbs.
"When they descend to a certain level they rarely ever come back in one piece, most are in a pine box or behind bars," said one vice squad member from the region where Joao Moreira spent his childhood – the city of Curitiba, capital of the state of Parana. It's a state that boasts the world-famous Iguazu Falls on the Brazil-Argentina border, but deep in the heart of Curitiba was no paradise in as Moreira grew up.
Last Sunday, Moreira racked up a staggering eight winners at Sha Tin in Hong Kong.
However, his day of rewriting history seemed a lifetime away when, as a tiny eight-year-old, he joined a formidable group of youths that were delving in any sort of vice in the back blocks of his home country.
In 1990, Moreira was seduced into a gang of teenagers that were an assortment of tough young wild men, possibly the next generation of thugs, that took the jockey onto the very edges of serious crime.
Many parts of Brazil are racked by overwhelming poverty, which makes a life of crime more tempting. How can you get a warm bed and meal if you don't have cash?
To complicate matters, Moreira's father died in 1991. This left his mother to fend for her eight children and a valuable mentor and voice of reason had left their lives.
"I only talk about this because I want people to know that you can get a second chance," Moreira said this week. "I was going around with a very tough group of boys and by the time I turned 11 I was going to places that I still look back on and I'm horrified about. It mightn't be apparent in Australia, the amount of groups that just spring up, but in Brazil it's different.
"Ninety-eight per cent of the population in Brazil know that drugs, prostitution and all those sort of things are out there and these gangs are a huge part of criminal elements."
At 33, Moreira will be at Flemington to ride Extreme Choice in the Newmarket Handicap on Saturday as well as Tully in the Australian Cup.
But the Brazilian reflects that he doesn't want titles like the "Magic Man". He believes that God has given him not only some rare gifts but showed him a passage out of crime.
'Joao is becoming to global racing what Pele or Ronaldo are to football.'
"When I turned 14, I seemed to be getting in deeper and deeper. Then my brother, Jose, came and grabbed me and said your life is being wasted. You've got to do something more than this, you'll end up lost and confused like them.
"He dragged me out and found me a small job in a furniture factory in the city and I set about doing a real job, focusing on getting a genuine pay packet. What Jose did for me, I can never repay," he said.
After life as a factory worker, Moreira eventually found his own calling. Riding horses, with a rare and remarkable gift for making them go from mediocre to great.
But it's a modest and humble Joao Moreira who said that he wanted to talk about his time in the gangs and in the unsavoury parts of life in Brazil.
He says each day he thanks God that not only has he been blessed with a healthy young family, his other family are thriving back in Brazil.
"I tell young people that I stumbled when I was that young, I got in with this crowd, but thank goodness I have someone who came into my life and showed me the way out and who showed me the importance of whatever you do, you do well.
"Forget my records and all of that, everyone if they try hard enough can get that second chance. I got it through a brother but it could come from anywhere.
"I have this wonderful gift of riding horses and it's been terribly successful. But it's not me, I've been blessed with the way my life's panned out and it's up to me to make the very best of it," he said.
Moreira speaks to his brother weekly. They swap stories of their lives in two countries. They are brothers who have a bond that will never be broken.
Andrew Harding, one of the senior executives at the Hong Kong Jockey Club said: "You would have to say he was one of Brazil's greatest sporting exports. Joao is becoming to global racing what Pele or Ronaldo are to football."
"He is a phenomenon the likes of which we have not seen in Hong Kong before," Harding said, adding that with a legacy of racing in Hong Kong dating to the 1840s "that's saying something".
However, if Jose Moreira hadn't said all those years ago "he ain't heavy, he's my brother", Joao Moreira wouldn't be the talk of the racing world today.