I'm sure many of you have got yourselves well-prepared for the football frenzy that will have our attention for the next three weeks, as the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine kicked-off last night. Co-hosts Poland and Greece drew 1-1 in the opening match held in Warsaw, while the Russian team played fantastically and were very dangerous up front, especially in their counter attack, earning themselves a well-deserved 4-1 victory against Czech Republic early this morning!
Given Spain's great success and dominance of the world stage since the last Euro tournament in Austria and Switzerland four years ago, it comes as no surprise that they are seen as the tournament favourite this time. However, given the recent news reports about the tensions and feud between Barca and Madrid players in the La Roja team, and the fact that no defending champion has successfully defended a title since this tournament was commenced in 1960, there is some hope for other national teams in the quest for glory this year.
As for my home country Germany, coach Joachim Löw hasn't made too many changes to the squad as Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Muller, Mario Gomez and Philipp Lahm remain the key members. But the injection of young sensations like Mario Goetze, Toni Kroos and Marco Reus will definitely bring a higher energy level, as well as adding more creativity and dynamism to the team.
Though they will play all their three group matches in Ukraine, Die Mannschaft placed their training base at the Polish port of Gdansk, a city whose German name – Danzig – will perhaps be familiar to you racing fans as it is of course the name of a very influential thoroughbred stallion. The decision to locate the squad there was perhaps made because of this city's proximity to Germany, but I believe the hours of travel from their training base to the competition venues will not be a big issue for them as they seek a fourth win in the tournament.
A bigger issue is the fact that they will need to take on some tough opponents early on as Germany have been drawn in the “Group of Death”, squaring off with the Netherlands, Portugal and Denmark in Group B. In their first group match tonight they will face Portugal led by Real Madrid striker Cristiano Ronaldo. I hope they all can make a winning start to ensure a smoother passage to the knock-out stage later on.
The Jockey Club, as always, continues to provide legalised and regulated football betting services to our customers, so as to channel their demands during the Euro football tournament. Viewing this from another perspective, such service is also important in our concerted efforts to counter illegal bookmaking activities both locally and offshore, which tend to be more active during major international football tournaments as the availability of live coverage of these matches in local TV channels often attracted greater attention from more football and sports fans in Hong Kong.
If the Club's football betting services and products are not competitive enough, it will simply drive our customers to patronise those illegal channels, which offer larger variety of bet types and the availability of credit betting. The unwanted problems such as credit betting and loan-sharking activities that associate with illicit operators would in turn create further social problems that would no doubt require our community to devote even more resources to resolve. In such a scenario, the betting revenues involved would be drained off from the legalised channels and hence the public coffer too.
That's why I hope that you all, at all times, will utilise our legalised and regulated betting channels should you wish to give a little betting support to your favourite football teams or your preferred runners when watching any of our 10 races at Sha Tin Racecourse this afternoon. Among the races on today's card, the Hong Kong Riding For The Disabled Association Cup is run as a Class 3 event over 1000m. The pace is expected to be good to slow which is a little bit unusual for this distance, but there does not appear to be any brilliant speedster among the known horses in the race. I assume that the usual draw bias is in place that horses drawn near to the outside fence with high draw numbers have an advantage, and this should help especially Flying Together in Gate 11 to get to the lead and makes him a place chance. Fastplus Hero won his only start in New Zealand over 1200m as three-year-old in April last year and has shown good speed in his trials and is at least a place chance. Demon Demon is another interesting first time starter in Hong Kong, with a record of one win from seven starts in Australia, including the victory in his last start over 1200m in December 2011. He is a place chance for me but my favourite in this race is Zezao, who is in smashing form since being transferred to the Richard Gibson stable and on his last start on a yielding track, when he finished 5th beaten two lengths. I think he should do better on a good track today.
In the meantime, if you have not already done so, I would like to suggest to you to try out the Race Simulator App, which has been downloaded by over 110,000 racing fans so far. Interesting enough, the App predicts Zezao to win, too. I like to play around the parameters which are fun and I found it interesting to compare the simulator forecast against mine!
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