I believe many of you know that the 2010 Asian Games will be held in Guangzhou in November. As part of the final preparations, the venue for the equestrian competitions in Conghua, which has been designed and built by The Hong Kong Jockey Club, is currently staging its debut equestrian event. I attended the second day of the competition yesterday, and I must say that the facilities there are very advanced and of top-class standard. I was pleased to hear some of the participating riders, who come from both the Mainland and Hong Kong, tell me they were very satisfied with the facilities and set-up.
I also had another important mission on this trip. On Thursday evening, I attended a ceremony co-hosted by the Club and the Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee, in which we signed a Memorandum of Understanding on providing technical support to the equestrian events of the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games, along with an agreement to commit a 30 million yuan donation to drive and perfect the equestrian competitions.
Making good use of the experience gained from Hong Kong's staging of the Beijing 2008 Olympics equestrian events, we feel we can make a valuable contribution to the success of the Asian Games by transferring this knowledge to our counterparts in Guangzhou and Conghua. Besides having created the equestrian venue, we are providing the Games organisers with support and professional services in areas like horse movement, stable management, equine medical care, competition facility management and specialised equipment.
Going back to domestic matters, since we made some changes to the format of our Chinese TV racing programmes this year, we've received quite a number of opinions and suggestions from racing fans. I'd like to thank all of you for your support, as your views will definitely help us make further improvements to these services.
In fact, the restructuring of our TV racing programmes this season was based largely on our analysis of views on the previous services, from our racing customers through different channels such as focus groups and surveys. In particular, the changes are aimed at giving racing fans more in-depth analysis and insight on horses' lead-up work to their races.
Some of you may know that over the past few seasons, trackwork footage of declared runners was available in the pre-race TV programme shown the day before the meeting. Now we've arranged for this programme to be shown two days prior to the raceday. And more importantly, we will try to include the footage showing the performance of each runner in one or two of their trackwork sessions, or even three in some occasions, so as to offer our TV viewers and racing fans a more extensive coverage and analysis on the trackwork performances of each runner.
We believe these arrangements will give our racing fans a better idea of the runners' recent preparation work and any changes in their fitness or condition. And as we're making the trackwork footage available a day earlier before, racing fans will also have longer time to study, or check it out on the Club's website, in case they are not able to watch the raceday preview programmes live at home. This will be especially important when we have Saturday meetings. In the past, when trackwork footage was shown until Friday, the time was quite tight for those who like to study horse form and trackwork performances in detail. Moving the programme a day earlier, our fans will now have more time to do this.
In addition, the preview programme on the night before the meeting will be focused on highlighting the key contenders and providing viewers with more race information and statistics. This will make it easier and useful for those racing fans who have limited time to study the form.
I can understand, though, that it will take some of our fans a while to adjust to these changes. To further improve our programmes and better meet your needs in the future, I hope you will continue to give your feedback and share your thoughts with me through this blog.
After making my own studies for our Sha Tin meeting today, I expect John Size has some very good chances with horses like Hot Shot and Mandarin.
In the Buffalo Hill Handicap, Mandarin has shown great potential as he snatched two winners last season. He should be leading in this race with the pace expected to be good. Douglas Whyte will again be on board and I’ll be interested to see if this horse can make a good start in his season debut. As one of my chosen Rising Stars, I believe Praising will be well placed in this race. He produced some stable performances over six-furlong last term. Competing in the same distance this time, I see him as the main danger to Mandarin. Flying Supreme also has plenty of potential as he won three times over 1200m last season. He certainly has the credential to challenge Mandarin and Praising. Due to the draw, I expect Elite Fortune will have to come from behind and being held back further than usual, but I’ll not be too surprised if he finishes close in this event.
In the Skol Handicap, I believe it will be a fantastic race and I expect the good to fast pace should help Amigo and Little Dreams. Litttle Dreams has been gelded last month, but he has recovered very well and has done plenty of work over the past few weeks. Michael Chang’s Amigo made a fair performance in the SAR Chief Executive’s Cup in the season opening day. He will benefit from his last run, but he and Little Dreams will both have to beat Cerise Cherry. This Derek Cruz’s runner should be leading in this race and even he will be up in class this time, I think he has further potential and I’ll see if he can rack up another win in this 1400m event. But one should not forget Dream Team as he showed a good performance in his last start. Back to his pet distance of 1400m, I think he can also finish close in this race.
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