It's been a very sad time for everybody in Hong Kong over the past few days, as Monday’s bus hostage saga in Manila claimed the lives of eight Hong Kong citizens and left seven others injured. I felt as saddened and aggrieved by the tragedy as I'm sure many of you did. On behalf of all of us at the Jockey Club, I should like to express our condolences to those families who lost their loved ones, and wish the injured a speedy recovery.
Through the Jockey Club Emergency Relief Fund set up earlier this year, we have offered immediate financial relief to the families of the deceased and the injured to tide them through this difficult period. As an organisation that has always been dedicated to charitable giving, we realise how important it is that families struck by tragedy don't have financial worries to add to their burden. I hope they can overcome their grief and start to rebuild their lives as quickly as possible.
Though it’s been difficult to focus on horse racing in the past few days, our preparation work for the new season has to go on. This year we've had a relatively shorter summer break, which means that our working team began getting ready for the new season almost as soon as the old one ended.
Earlier today, we unveiled the new series of TV programmes that will be produced for our racing fans this season, in which we will introduce new elements and supply different types of information before, during and after the racing action. For instance, those fans who like to focus on horses’ pre-race preparation in their race studies can keep an eye on our pre-race programme, where we will provide in-depth analysis of the runners' form and trackwork performances, show useful racing statistics and replay some relevant key races. In our post-race programmes, we will use a new technology called “Highlighter” to better illustrate race incidents and the performances of certain horses during the races.
Those of you joining the Pre-season Carnival at Sha Tin Racecourse tomorrow will have the opportunity to take a look at our newly-extended Diamond Vision screen, located closer to the public stand. The larger screen allows us to show more comprehensive racing and betting information during the races, which we hope will further enhance our customers' racecourse experience in the new season.
These changes all reflect the more customer-centric approach we are adopting from this season onwards. I hope our racing fans will enjoy these service enhancements and find them useful.
Incidentally, I was encouraged to see that all admission tickets for the Pre-season Carnival were sold out several days ago, which shows the high level of public interest in the new season. So if you are one of the lucky ticket holders, please come early so that you can enjoy the many special horse-related activities we are organising, before watching the day’s highlight event, the Jockeys’ Sprint, then the pre-season barrier trials on the Sha Tin turf. I hope you all have an enjoyable afternoon and look forward to seeing you there!
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