Although we still have three race meetings to go before the end of the current term, including tomorrow’s Sha Tin races, we have long been making our preparations for next season. Last week we announced the prize money increase for the Longines Hong Kong International Races in December, which we hope will attract overseas connections and further persuade them to send runners of even higher quality to contest our flagship international meeting. The decision will also benefit our local Owners and connections when their top-class racehorses triumph and excel against international opposition.
In our latest announcement yesterday we have extended a measure that will benefit connections of the remaining horse population. For the upcoming season, the standard prize money of our Class 1 to 5 races will increase. The actual increase will range between HK$15,000 for Class 5 races to HK$200,000 for both Class 1 and Class 2 races, with the maximum percentage of increase reaching 16 per cent.
We hope the increment will help offset the effects of the weakening Hong Kong Dollar and the continuing rise in the cost of purchasing quality horses, which affect Hong Kong Owners when they consider purchasing griffins or previously raced horses from overseas. By offering our Owners a higher prize money level and a better potential return, I think it will give them more attractive terms and therefore enhance their ownership experience.
In all, the changed prize money structure for 2012/13 will involve a total increase in prize money of over HK$40 million. It’s the second consecutive year we’ve made such a move, and the amount of increase is similar to the one we made for the current season last year. I believe this will be very important for our racing development as only by doing so can we ensure the general quality of our racehorses and see the quality of our races continue on the upside in the future.
On another note, some of you have expressed your concerns through this blog about the difficulties encountered when attempting to obtain racing information from our website, or when logging in to our online betting system last Sunday during the race meeting.
I have learnt that some speculated that this situation might have been brought about by the latest simulcast display enhancement feature that we introduced to our racing website last week, but I can assure you that that’s definitely not the case. Investigation into this web service incident was on top priority. We looked into the root problem found that it was caused by part of the Club’s servers, which are operated under the Linux operating system. Related servers lapsed into a very busy mode primarily after the leap second was introduced to the Coordinated Universal Time at 8am that day. I know that the Club was not the sole party affected by this issue, as some other major corporations over the world also encountered a similar situation that same day.
Our vendor has subsequently provided solutions to resolve the leap second issue on related servers, and the same situation has not recurred since then, including during our night race meeting on Wednesday.
Anyway, we will learn from the experience of the web service incident on 1 July, and continue to implement our technology upgrades to try avoiding issues of a similar nature. I hope that with the vendor solutions now in place, the system will be greatly improved and you will once again enjoy smooth visits to our website so that you can use the facility to enhance your enjoyment of our races at Sha Tin tomorrow, when some of Hong Kong’s smartest young prospects such as Sea Diamond and Scarlet Camellia will aim to get another win for their owners before the end of the season.
Among our 11 races scheduled tomorrow, the Bowring Handicap is the last race of the day and is run as a very competitive Class 2 over 1600m.The pace is expected to be good which gives every horse a fair chance. Regency Luck has led twice and won this season and likely to repeat this tactic. Jimson The Best and Dragon Fighter will compete for good positions just behind him with Scarlet Camellia, King Of Reason, Hot Shot and likely Victory Master well placed. Hot Shot was short of room last time and being well positioned in this race is a place chance for me! Finezza will have to come from the back of the field but is able to run fast last sectional which makes him a place chance.
The horses I like most in the race are Scarlet Camellia and Victory Master who both are working very well. In the end I like Scarlet Camellia more as he will be jumping from a lower draw.
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