There was a great party atmosphere as always for our first Happy Valley night meeting of the season on Wednesday, though it was a great shame that the mood was dampened a bit by the huge thunderstorm and heavy rainfall that broke shortly after Race 7. I can tell you that our rain gauge at the Racecourse showed more than 55 millimetres of rain falling in just 15 minutes!
It looked for a while as though we might have to abandon the final race. We were in continuous touch with the Hong Kong Observatory while at the same time, also kept checking on the weather radar. We learnt later the weather would soon be improved and hence we delayed the post time pending a further decision. Indeed, the rain started to ease off around 11.00 pm, and our officials then inspected the track and consulted the jockeys for their opinions.
In the end, the race started 25 minutes late, but everything went smoothly and I wish to offer my sincere thanks to everyone, especially our stables and tracks colleagues, who braved the adverse weather to carry out their duties.
After our first meeting of 2010/11 at Sha Tin and our first at Happy Valley, this weekend will see another first - our first overseas simulcast of the new season. Last season, interest in our simulcasts really took off, as we were able to bring our racing fans many more top overseas races than before, having been allowed to stage 15 simulcast days on top of the existing 10 simulcast races. As a result, last season’s simulcast turnover increased more than five fold to HK$850 million, which also meant that HK$114 million in betting duty revenues was contributed to the public purse.
I hope those of you who closely follow overseas racing were happy with our simulcast arrangements, as for the first time we were able to bring you live action from major races like the Darley July Cup, Kentucky Derby and Victoria Derby for the first time live in Hong Kong. We were also able to follow the latest performances of potential runners in the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Races and Audemars Piguet QE II Cup.
This year we intend to continue bringing you top overseas races, starting tomorrow with the Group 2 Centaur Stakes from Hanshin Racecourse, Japan. This will be the first time we've simulcast this important six-furlong event, which is one of the leading sprint races in Japan and also the fifth leg of the Global Sprint Challenge.
To add to the local interest, this year's race will feature one of our leading sprinters, KrisFlyer International Sprint winner Green Birdie, who has already been in Japan for a week preparing for the race. I understand he has settled in well and has been putting in some good performances at trackwork for his trainer, Caspar Fownes. Even he is having his first start of the season and drawn Gate 1 in the Hanshin track, he is the best sprinter in the field and Fownes’ stable is now in great form. Anyway, I hope we will see him deliver good performance on Sunday, which will set him up nicely for facing the likes of Singapore sprint sensation Rocket Man and Japan's top sprinter Laurel Guerreiro in the Group 1 Sprinters’ Stakes early next month.
The best Japanese sprinter in the field is no doubt Kinshasa no Kiseki, but this springtime sprint champion was scratched this morning, leaving another strongly-supported runner Sky no Dan bearing the hope of the home team. I think this upcoming four-year-old filly, and another in-form horse Sandalphon, will have place chance against Green Birdie. By the way, we have significantly upgraded our simulcast race information on the web site. So I recommend you to have a look and your feedback would be appreciated.
While the Centaur Stakes will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of our live coverage, I think some of the 10 local races, with the first race starting at 12.45pm tomorrow, should also prove quite interesting. Personally, I’ll be excited to watch how Little Bridge runs in the Guangzhou Handicap, as he is one of my top 10 picks in the My Rising Star campaign that to be launched by the Club tomorrow. Having racked up two victories last season, this four-year-old runner has trained very well in pre-season. He should have no issue with the good to fast pace, nor having drawn gate 1 which is not an advantage and even the going which may be on the good to soft side tomorrow. He’s my clear pick in this 1000m event. I expect his main opponents are Me Tsui's Invinciblekindness, and Super Fortune from Peter Ho's yard, as they both have good 1000 m straight form and their stables have started well.
In the Kwungtung Handicap Cup, we should see an interesting battle between Happy Boy who is in the in-form stable of Caspar Fownes and David Hall's Vaugirard. Happy Boy, being another My Rising Star selections I picked, has significant potential and is training well and Vaurigard's track work is very good but with the better draw, I favour Happy Boy a bit more. Despite that, I would not be surprised to see Easy Winner and Seek N’ Destroy running a good race. You may also need to watch out for Soaring Dragon if the track condition improves tomorrow.
Comment
