Last Sunday we saw a highly entertaining battle in the GOME Cup, with Final Answer and London China Town going head-to-head in the final stage of this top-class, six-furlong race on the all-weather track. Both horses delivered excellent performances: Final Answer coped well with a disadvantageous draw to take a comfortable lead, while London China Town produced an impressive late kick in the straight. In the end it came down to a photo finish – and even this was unable to separate them, as the judges finally decided these two four-year-olds had dead-heated.
This was the third time this season we've had a dead heat, two of them coming in major races, as you may recall that Rocket Man and One World shared the spoils in the Group 2 Cathay Pacific Jockey Club Sprint on 21 November. The other occasion was in the Happy Valley night meeting on 17 November when Sea Prince and Mr Vigorous could not be separated. It's a rare occurrence, as usually when the judges examine the photos closely, they can find a very slender margin between the first two horses. This often involves no more than a bit of luck, as one horse might have dipped his head just fractionally more than the other.
Probably not many racing fans know much about our raceday judges and who they are. At each meeting we have a three-member team of judges, two of whom are Club racing officials while the third is an honorary judge who is one of the Club’s Voting Members. We believe this combination helps ensure that the judging process is objective and fair throughout.
To assist them, we have an ultra-high speed digital photo finish system to capture and process high-resolution finishing photos for every race. Apart from the cameras above the Judges Box, there is another set installed at a high point of the grandstand to provide Judges with images taken from a higher angle at the winning post. This additional camera can often help the judges in making their final decision, especially in tight finishes involving multiple runners.
Although sometimes it may take a minute or two for our judges to review the photos before announcing the official results, I believe this short wait is well worthwhile as it's important to determine the race winner and placegetters fairly and accurately in this competitive sport. Most of all, these tight finishes once again reflect just how competitive and exciting our races in Hong Kong have become.
There are just two months now before this season’s most prestigious domestic race, the Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Derby. Earlier this week, we announced the first-stage entries for this year's Derby. Currently, we have 42 initial entries for this HK$16 million Group 1 event, being the same with that of last year. However, among them are 22 horses with ratings exceeding 90, seven more than at the corresponding stage in 2010. This suggests that the current crop of four-year-old elites are of even better quality than last season's, and I would say that the 2011 Derby will likely be one of the most keenly contested for a long time.
Some 18 of our young elites have also been entered for the inaugural leg of our four-year-old series – the Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Classic Mile – on 23 January. Among the initial field are prolific privately purchase griffins Little Bridge and other notable privately purchase prospects such as Lucky Nine, Military Move and Xtension. I'm sure you will all be as keen as I am to see which horse can draw the first blood in the series on Sunday week.
We still have three more meetings to go before that, though, starting at Happy Valley tonight. A few leading contenders in the 1O1O Million Challenge will be running in tonight’s races, most notably Holiday Sun who now occupies third place on the leaderboard, and two other top-ten contenders, Super Plus and Win Practitioner.
Holiday Sun can move into top position if he wins the Lam Tin Handicap tonight. However, with the expected good to slow pace in this 1800m race, I think this will give a slight advantage for horses on the pace and I will be most interested to see how Vitality Express runs. With Douglas Whyte on board, he will probably go forward to take up a position behind the speed. I hope he will deliver a nice performance tonight. I also expect a good showing from King Of Scots who will be well placed and will appreciate the softer ground in his first start in Happy Valley. Both Win Practitioner and Fearless will come with late but strong runs, and I think they will also finish close in this race.
The Victoria Racing Club Trophy was first run in March 1987 and it long symbols our excellent relationship. The Victoria Racing Club shares our passion and commitment of improving the quality of racing, and creates great racing events such as the Melbourne Cup which are internationally recognised as leading sporting events. In this trophy race this year, it’s expected to be run at a good to fast pace, which will give horses such as Island Super a chance to perform. Given to his past performances, he would not mind the expected softer track condition tonight. Despite he was drawn wide at 11, he still has an outside chance to win this race. The main contenders for me are Impeccable which shows nice improvement recently, as well as Topping Light and the John Moore-trained Elite Sixty-Six, who was held up for a run last time.
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