I’m sure most of you have enjoyed a wonderful Christmas break with your family and friends, with the chilly weather bringing some extra festive atmosphere to this year's celebrations. I took the chance of spending a brief holiday out of Hong Kong, but only a short-haul trip so that I could return to the office right after the holidays.
It’s just four days now before we step into a New Year. Looking back on 2012, I can proudly say that we've continued making good progress in local racing development, with the revitalisation of Hong Kong racing being one of the major success stories. As part of our ongoing Racecourse Master Plan, new venues equipped with high-tech features like adrenaline and The Gallery, as well as the Young Members Box, which enables us to better cater the demands of new racing fans and young professionals, came into operation during the year and have been very well received by our Owners, Members and other racing fans.
Many overseas visitors and media who came to join our international event also gave their thumbs-up to these new facilities, praising their high standards and commenting that not as much was being done in their home countries to improve racecourse catering and enhance customers’ racing experience.
Naturally, I'm delighted to hear positive feedback like this, as it reassures us that our efforts to drive the development of the sport and ensure its sustainability are moving in the right direction. Extending racing into lifestyle is helping us stay competitive in today's fast-growing leisure market, so that Hong Kong can continue to be a world leader in racing and the global gaming and entertainment industry, and a healthy customer base in supporting our sport.
Both the new racing fans and our loyal customers are very important for the sustainability of Hong Kong racing. Our initiatives have not been confined to racing hardware as, for instance, we've also introduced a number of new measures for our betting customers this year. Though the prohibitively high race betting tax rate of 72.5-75 per cent hinders us from extending our rebate to all losing bets, regardless of the amount of betting dollars, we give back to the mass customers through different measures and initiatives on many other fronts, such as lowering of unit bets for certain bet types to give greater flexibility, upgrading public hall facilities and last but not least, the introduction of priority cards with a variety of entitlements on food and beverage and service upgrade. In the future, we will continue to upgrade different kinds of service to our racing customer and I hope we will continue to have your support in the coming year.
Tonight at Happy Valley we will host the last race meeting of the calendar year. What makes it even more special is that it’s a Friday night meeting, the first (and last!) Friday night meeting of 2012. With the New Year's Day meeting falling next Tuesday, we felt that a regular Saturday or Sunday meeting would be too close to that. So that's why we decided to go for a Friday night, and I'll be very interested to see how our racing fans respond to such a special Friday meeting. So please bring your colleagues and friends to Happy Valley after work tonight and carry on the Christmas party atmosphere!
The eight races on the card look well set to continue the festive excitement. Among them in the Venus Handicap, it is a true Class 2 event with a rating band of 100 to 80. The race will run over 1650m at the C+3 Course which tends to favour horses with lower draws and on the fence. The tempo in this race is expected to be very slow which favours horses on the pace. Unless the newcomer Backbench Blues goes fast in front the tempo will be slow as mentioned before. He is likely to share the lead with Enabling, while Groovy and Outdoor Pegasus being well placed behind the leaders. Beauty Lead should be on the fence in midfield, with Happy Tumbler, Elegance Klammer and Finezza in the back of the field.
Enabling was disappointing in his last outing but the slow pace should help him to control the race and he is for me a good win and place chance. Beauty Lead has trialled in Happy Valley and has improved this season and is also a win and place chance in this very open race, as is Happy Tumbler who has won twice over this trip and distance. As an outsider I have Outdoor Pegasus who should be able to overcome his wide draw and go forward. He made a surprise win over this course and distance at even a higher handicap mark last term.
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