I'm sure many of you who are big sports fans like me will have stayed up into the early hours of last Sunday to watch the UEFA Champions League final, in which Barcelona were deservedly crowned this season’s European champions after defeating Manchester United 3-1.
Though facing the English Premier League Champions, Barca's players were able to dominate the midfield with their neat passing, then make that dominance count with some great finishing by the likes of David Villa and Lionel Messi. Only some fine saves by United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar, who was playing the last match of his professional career, helped keep the final margin from being even greater.
Personally, I think Barca somewhat dismantled the Red Devils, and it was no overstatement for United manager Sir Alex Ferguson when he admitted after the match that he had lost to the best team in the world, and the strongest he had faced in his long and distinguished career. It is noteworthy that most of the winning team are graduates of the Barca football academy and have grown up playing together for many years. Having been instilled with the concepts of team football at a young age, they have developed great understanding between them, and know each other's strengths and weaknesses very well.
This underlines the great importance of youth football training, which can lay down a valuable long-term foundation for raising the standards of a football team, or even a whole country or region. While not all the youngsters who engage in these training programmes will become professional footballers in the end, they can still learn the virtues of sportsmanship, fair play, team spirit and discipline. I believe these are important values that will benefit them throughout their future lives.
A number of top European teams such as Barcelona, Chelsea and Arsenal have established youth football academies in Hong Kong in recent years, bringing their own training expertise to young footballers in Hong Kong. But you can imagine that the admission quotas for these courses are always very limited, and cannot adequately meet the huge local demand.
We at the Club are pleased to play our own part in supporting the development of this popular sport in Hong Kong. A fortnight ago, we donated HK$1.25 million through our Charities Trust to the Hong Kong Football Association to run this year's Jockey Club Youth Football Scheme. This much-admired scheme has been running for more than 30 years and sees thousands of budding young footballers participate every year. Quite a number of our local professional footballers first learned their skills through this scheme when they were young.
We hope that by sponsoring this programme once again, we can help give more local children from different family backgrounds the chance to receive basic football training during the summer. Further training can also be given to those who have shown nice potentials in the programme.
Another recent move we took to support sports development at community level was our HK$3.5 million sponsorship of the 3rd Hong Kong Games, a three-week citywide competition covering eight different sports at various districts in Hong Kong. After our race meeting at Sha Tin last Sunday, I went to Ma On Shan to watch the finals of the futsal, which is a type of indoor football, and present medals to the match winners. It was an entertaining game and I thought some of the young players demonstrated impressive skills and techniques. Through sponsoring the Hong Kong Games, we hope to encourage more local people to participate actively in sport and develop a healthy lifestyle.
Turning our focus back from football to racing, on Sunday you saw an exciting finish between Mighty High and Mr Medici in the Group 1 Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup. This victory, along with Dim Sum’s triumph in the Group 3 Sha Tin Vase, completed a memorable double for trainer John Moore. Despite this, there was no change in the battle for this year's Trainers' Premiership, as his two closest rivals Tony Cruz and John Size also had two winners each. It means Tony still leads John Moore by six wins, while John Size remains five further behind in third.
With just 11 race meetings to go before the season ends, you can expect the competition between them to intensify. At our Happy Valley meeting tonight, Tony has potentially the strongest hand with six runners, compared with four for John Size and two for John Moore, so it will be interesting to see if he can extend his lead.
But I think John Size has a very good chance to score in the Wong Nai Chung Gap Handicap. The expected good to fast pace should help his runner The Wand, who was drawn in Gate 1 with Douglas Whyte on board, to settle in midfield and tackle his main opponent Gurus Dream, who will be starting from Gate 2 and go forward. Both horses are very promising four-year-olds with both having their second start. It may be of interest that Douglas who rode Gurus Dream in its maiden start in Hong Kong has chosen The Wand. For other runners Vintage Hussler and Shahjee are also capable for a close finish.
In the Mount Nicholson Handicap we see a clear favourite in Kyara. The expected good to slow pace should help him to be in a forward position from Gate 1. After switching stable, Kyara seems to relax better and his last run over 1200m in Sha Tin was encouraging in combination with a very convincing Happy Valley trial. My Mate Adric is in good form and being in a forward position in the race would be helpful, especially when we race on the C+3 course in Happy Valley. Perfect Gear coming back into Class 3 with an extended rating band of 85 to 60 is an interesting outsider as well as the other Caspar Fownes’ starter Royal Pumpkin.
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