It's been a while since I last posted a blog here, but as you can imagine, I'm still keeping a close eye on all horse racing news during the summer break. It was great to see our apprentice jockey Alvin Ng enjoying victory in Macau last weekend, becoming the second Hong Kong rider after Derek Leung to win the Asian Young Guns Challenge contest. Alvin landed a winner, a 3rd place and a 5th place in the three legs of the Challenge to beat 11 other top young riders from around the region, and also rode another winner at Taipa Racecourse the same afternoon.
In the past few years, our apprentices have produced some impressive performances in this top Asian-Pacific apprentice jockeys series. It's always good to see our young riders showing their competitiveness and ability to perform on the international stage.
This weekend another of our home-grown talents, Matthew Chadwick, will be taking on international competition when he rides in the more established Shergar Cup at Ascot Racecourse tomorrow. Like most participating jockeys he will have five rides in the series. Lining up beside him will be top names such as Frankie Dettori, Kieren Fallon and Johnny Murtagh, as well as world-class female jockeys like Britain's Hayley Turner and Canada's Chantal Sutherland and Emma-Jayne Wilson. So whatever the result, I’m sure Matthew will gain some invaluable experience from racing in this top company.
In the past few decades, the Club has devoted substantial investments to its apprentice training programmes, providing the resources required to ensure the young riders' all-round development. It's nice to see this programme bearing fruit, not just in Hong Kong racing but also in top events overseas.
As the largest charitable contributor in Hong Kong, the Club has also donated substantial amounts to support the development of other local sports in recent years, both on the hardware side by funding sports infrastructure and on the software side by sponsoring different training programmes. So it's good to see that Hong Kong athletes are increasingly making their mark in a number of different sports at international level, including of course at the current London Olympics.
I've been watching as much of the Olympics as I can, as I expect many of you have, and it's been very encouraging to see the admirable performances of Hong Kong's team. Especially notable was the bronze medal won by our top track cyclist Sarah Lee Wai-sze in the Women's Keirin event last Friday.
Sadly I missed the live action of Sarah's performance, but I've since watched the replay of the event and I think she gave a very gutsy overall performance. Despite losing in the first round of the competition, she recovered well and delivered a top ride in the repechage round to go through. This gave her a much-needed confidence boost for the semi-finals and final, where she was outstanding.
Earlier another top Hong Kong cyclist, veteran Wong Kam-po, put in an excellent performance in the road race. Although Ah Po was only placed 37th, his finishing time was just 40 seconds behind the winner, which is really nothing in a 250km race - and indeed, he finished ahead of the recent Tour de France winner, Britain's Bradley Wiggins. The cycling events have been dominated over the years by the experienced European, American or Australian riders, so I think it's great to see Asian cyclists showing they can compete at the same level.
These successes reflect not only the natural ability of the athletes concerned, but also the huge effort they put into their training, and the tremendous support and guidance of their coaching team. Equally important for any sport, however, is sufficient funding to sustain its long-term development. In this respect, the Club has long played an active role in Hong Kong, contributing to numerous sports projects, including large-scale sports training and sports venues such as the Hong Kong Sports Institute and the Hong Kong Stadium. We are pleased to support more such development projects should suitable future opportunities arise.
Some of the Club's major contributions to local sporting facilities, among them the redevelopment of Happy Valley Racecourse, the rebuilding of Hong Kong Stadium and the establishment of the Jockey Club Kau Sai Chau Public Golf Course, came into being during the leadership of Sir John Swaine, who was Chairman of the Club from 1993 to 1996. We were all greatly saddened this week to hear that Sir John had passed away in Malta after a short illness, at the age of 80.
Sir John was passionate about his horse racing and was instrumental, too, in advancing our international races to the next level in mid-90s. Since 1975, he had owned at least 25 horses either in his own right or as a racing syndicate member. Fleet Command, one of his co-owned horses, is still racing and under training.
Sir John became a popular and highly-respected figure in the Club over his 50-plus years of membership, and will be greatly missed. I should like to pass my deepest condolences to Lady Swaine and the family at this difficult time.
This weekend will see some top racing action taking place in France, including two trophy races being run tomorrow in the name of the Club – the G3 Prix Gontaut-Biron-Hong Kong Jockey Club, and the Prix du Hong Kong Jockey Club. This is part of a successful collaboration between the HKJC and France Galop since 2009, under which two races are run at Happy Valley in the name of France Galop each May, tying in with Le French May festival, and conversely two races are run in the name of the HKJC at Deauville Racecourse in August.
This positive co-operation between our two racing jurisdictions also plays an important role in promoting global racing development. We are very much looking forward to another successful HKJC meeting at Deauville this weekend.
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