Over the past fortnight I have paid much attention to the news concerning the serious floods affecting central Europe, including my home country Germany. The scale and severity of the flooding this time has been the most serious in the past century, leaving some cities in the eastern part of the country submerged under water for days. Thousands of people had to evacuate from their homes and were led to safety. It has already caused damage amounting to billions of Euros and I hope the situation will be alleviated as soon as possible.
I know that the flood this time did not affect German racing too much. Apart from the cancellation of a few race meetings held at the lesser tracks in the affected regions, it only induced moderate disruption to thoroughbred operations generally. As a horseman I hope everybody and every horse will be unharmed and able to resume their normal lives in the near future.
Approaching the end of current season here in Hong Kong, many local horsemen have begun preparing the groundwork and setting targets for next term. Among local trainers, Peter Ng and Andy Leung will leave the trainers’ rank next month, as both have reached retirement age. And among the jockeys, the surprising news you may have heard recently is that South African rider Richard Fourie will depart.
Fourie was in his debut season in Hong Kong. Having notched 34 winners so far, I think many of you would agree that he has been doing very well, you could say it’s been a successful spell if one judges it by his winning tally. That’s why it’s certainly a tough decision for him to choose to go back to his home country to take up a good stable jockey offer and chase the South African champion jockey title.
Although he will go back to South Africa to take up the new challenge, I’m pleased to hear that Fourie treasures the experience he has had here, particularly what he has learnt here this season, as Hong Kong has further sharpened his skills and made him a much smarter jockey now. He has also said that he would like to come back to ride in Hong Kong in the future. Hopefully everything goes smoothly for him and I wish him all the best when he returns to South Africa.
Other than Fourie, Tommy Berry from Australia is another successful young riding talent that we recently recruited to ride in local races. In recent years we have been working very hard to recruit talented riders from around the world to ride in Hong Kong and some of them have enjoyed notable success here. Tomorrow the Licensing Committee will host a meeting to discuss the licensing matters for next season. Some would expect that we will see some new faces in the new season and tomorrow you will know who the newcomers will be.
Before that, this afternoon we have arranged 11 exciting races at Sha Tin, offering you another option in celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival today. When studying today’s races card, both the HKU Alumni Association Challenge Cup and the HKU Jockey Club Student Villages Handicap caught may attention as there are some young upcoming horses contesting in both races. In the former race which is Class 3 event over 1200m, Aaron Kwok's horse My Favorite is in this race, which is dominated by three and four-year-olds. The expected pace of good to slow should enable him to get a good position behind the expected leaders after coming out of gate 1, and is for me a good chance to win the race. His main opponent is Winnie's Horse which with Gerald Mosse should be well positioned just behind the leaders, while Super Jockey and Seasons Star are other place chances.
The HKU Jockey Club Student Villages Handicap is named after a donation of HK$42 million to build the phase 2 of the Student Village project, and this Class 3 event over 1600m has another upcoming horse in the name of Dr Good Habit in it. The good to slow pace should favour him to get from his middle draw of gate 8 to go forward and get a position just behind race leader Chancellor and win the race. His main opponents I see in Chancellor and Winning Instinct, with Level Player as another place chance.
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