Glorious sunshine and fantastic sport are always the perfect combination and last Sunday’s Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup day was blessed with both. The main event produced a surprise result as Blazing Speed ensured his handler Tony Cruz notched the final local Group 1 event on our calendar for the second consecutive season. It was an outstanding performance by the horse as his dazzling run down the home straight gave his opponents no chance at all. The fact that our Stewards’ Cup winner was unheralded pre-race says something of the contest’s class, and in particular the reputation of our Derby winner Designs On Rome, whose fans were ultimately disappointed as he was only 5th. Maybe Designs On Rome’s condition has dropped off a bit at the end of a long campaign, but after a well-deserved summer break I am sure we will see the best of this exciting talent next season.
As regular readers of my blog know, I am a huge football fan and I cannot let last weekend’s Champions League final pass without comment. What a game! Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid produced a nail-biting contest. Atletico played very physically in the first hour and effectively neutralised the threat from Real and took one-goal lead, which they defended brilliantly. But the Real players know the value of persistence – they played their hearts out and created wave after wave of attacks without being able to break down the Atletico defence. That was until Sergio Ramos became their savior deep into added time as he headed in the equalising goal. Real subsequently added three more goals in extra time, which was largely due to the Atletcio players becoming painfully leg-weary. It was a high tension match and supporters of both teams can be proud of the players’ performances.
Sergio Ramos, who turned the game on its head, received his youth training at Sevilla from the age of 10, before joining Real at the age of 19 in 2005. He typifies the value of good youth training in shaping a world-class footballer. In Hong Kong again this summer, thousands of youth will have the chance to receive basic football training under the Jockey Club Youth Football Development Programme – Summer Scheme – which we announced jointly with the Hong Kong Football Association on Monday.
Last Thursday, we gave our support on the hardware side of things with HK$63 million of funding for Jockey Club Kitchee Centre. And this year is the third in which we have sponsored the youth programme on the software side, thanks to a HK$12.15 million donation from our Charities Trust. In my view, it’s always important for youth footballers to receive systematic training to improve skills, technique and tactics, and so raise the level of their game. I know the importance of this from personal experience – at the age of 12, I trained four to five times a week. I think that if you don’t have these programmes and facilities, and the intensity and frequency of training, it will be very difficult for a youth player to progress to the top level.
This summer scheme is part of a wider programme of youth development, therefore we are very delighted to offer our support. Trainees from the age of four, boys and girls, can have the chance to learn football training, discipline and the ethics of the sport, and those that emerge as elite trainees even have the chance to join the elite camp and compete for the chance to visit the UK and see what the professional footballers do. With this being a World Cup year, I believe the programme will be very popular this time. I hope everybody who joins the programme will enjoy it.
Those of you who enjoy attending our races at Happy Valley should not miss the chance to join us there tonight as it will be the second last Valley meeting before the end of the season. Along with various on-course programmes we have arranged for this finale night of the Le French May themed meetings, there are also eight very competitive races on the card. Among them, the Wong Nai Chung Gap Handicap is a Class 2 over 1200m and is run as the last race of the night. Bundle Of Joy, who was ridden differently to usual last time, dropping back from a wide draw, should return to his normal tactics tonight from barrier 1 and take the lead. Great Storm is likely to be pushed forward to contest the lead with him. Caga Force, Cour Valant, Happy Yeah Yeah and Exciting Dream should be well placed in midfield, resulting in a good to slow pace. Exciting Dream is working well and he’s my first choice in this race. Bundle Of Joy from the inside gate, and Happy Yeah Yeah from his good draw in gate 2, are other win and place chances, as is Caga Force and Cour Valant. As an outsider with improvement to come, I would recommend taking a look at Great Storm.
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