I'm sure that most of you have been taking a close interest this week in the unfolding story about our discovery of Zilpaterol in the urine samples of some horses over the past few days, as well as in two brands of horse feed. With Zilpaterol being a banned substance under our Rules of Racing, we were obligated to withdraw the horses concerned from their respective races on Wednesday.
Given the swift development of this issue, with the co-operation of different teams within the Club as well as from the trainers, we adopted an active and prudent approach in dealing with it, whilst not in any way taking the matter lightly. In fact, we are one of the very few racing clubs in the world that provide feed purchasing services, sample testing and laboratory support to our licensed trainers, including horse feed testing, and the mechanism has been very comprehensive. That also explains why we could work together efficiently and tackle the matter as soon as we did.
Our highly professional Racing Laboratory colleagues have been working around the clock over the past week, conducting urgent sample testing on top of the normal pre-race and post-race testing. Meanwhile our racing team have been as dedicated as always, not only conducting investigations into the matter and arranging remedial measures, but also ensuring that the latest information has been channelled to our trainers and also shared with the racing public so as to help them understand the situation. We hope this approach has been able to minimise the impact on all parties concerned.
We have checked with experts in the US and confirmed that it should not be a horse welfare issue due to the small dose of the substance our horses exposed to. Trainers are informed of the advice from the US experts and they could continue to use the feed or switch to another feed brand if they wish to. The stables management team tried hard to ensure enough supplies of these other brands would be delivered to all stables concerned in good time. Meanwhile our Veterinary Clinical Services Department has been closely monitoring the health of all horses that might have consumed feed containing traces of Zilpaterol, and have not found any to show abnormal conditions.
While investigations are still under way, it’s good that the lab test results of the 117 declared runners conducted on Thursday and Friday, which included approximately 80 horses that have previously been exposed to either of the two contaminated feed products, have tested negative for Zilpaterol, and have therefore been declared clear to run. As is normal practice, pre-race urine samples will be obtained early Sunday morning from all horses, and I hope they all will be cleared to run without further problems.
With just three weeks to go until the end of the season, we certainly hope that all outstanding matters can be resolved soon and any impact on our remaining races minimised. We will continue to do our best to ensure that all horses entered for our races can do so in accordance with the Rules of Racing. I'm encouraged to see that so many of our racing fans have expressed their understanding of the situation and support for the actions we have taken.
One group of people who are always very supportive of our racing activities are our Club Members. Tomorrow, our annual Members’ Day offers us a great opportunity to thank them for that support and give them a special day out with their families. It also gives them a good opportunity to meet and socialise with other Club Members, and to strengthen the bonds between us all.
We've arranged a number of different on-course activities for the Members who come to Sha Tin tomorrow and, as it also happens to be Father’s Day, these include some special offers for those Members who are fathers. I hope they enjoy an entertaining afternoon of racing with their families.
As always, one of the feature races will be the Members Cup. It is run as a Class 3 event over 1650m on the All Weather track. There will be rain for the weather forecast tomorrow and I expect the track being wet and rain-affected but you may check again before the races. The pace is expected to be good to slow with I Smell Money and Invictus in the lead. With Xilai Xianzi and possibly Skip Court pressing behind it should ensure the pace not to be too slow. Following the pace group those to be well positioned should be Horse Aplenty, Superninsky and Cultural City and Eagle Power, but the latter horse is likely to race wide.
The Dennis Yip stable is now in great form and his runner Dars Auto is working well. Despite the rating increase he’s my first choice to win or at least be placed. Horse Aplenty is the choice of Douglas Whyte and is for me a win and place chance too. Superninsky is an improving horse and is an interesting outsider in the field. Invictus has to overcome his wide draw but I would not be surprised if he makes a place finish.
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