Happy New Year! I hope you all had a bright start to 2015 and picked a few winners at our first race meeting of the year on Thursday. It’s been a good start to the year for us at the Club as more than 67,000 racegoers attended our races that afternoon, and the day’s turnover exceeded HK$1.5 billion. This amount was the highest recorded for the New Year’s Day race meeting since 1997, and also the highest so far this season.
Over the past few years, we have put in effort to promote race meetings through innovative new approaches to create greater racecourse experience for racing fans. For the New Year’s Day race meeting, we have launched specially-designed merchandises and offer jackpots for the exotic pools to start the new calendar year. I’m delighted that we saw a good crowd turn out on Thursday, which created a great atmosphere at Sha Tin racecourse.
On the sporting front, Paul O’Sullivan and Umberto Rispoli both made excellent starts to 2015. O’Sullivan grabbed three winners to extend his great winning record at the New Year’s Day fixture. And Umberto, who rode two winners for O’Sullivan, also delivered a star performance with four winners on the day, all told.
This Sunday, the jockey premiership leader Joao Moreira will resume riding but reigning champion Zac Purton is still under suspension. It will be interesting to see if the Italian jockey or any of his colleagues will take the chance and add to their winning tallies in the next few race meetings.
I’m confident that you will enjoy the same level of excitement in the 10 races we have arranged at our Sha Tin race meeting tomorrow. As mentioned, Moreira will resume after serving a three-meeting suspension, and he has nine rides tomorrow. Joao now leads Zac by seven wins in the premiership. With Zac now sidelined for a while, it’s very likely Joao will extend his lead and it will be interesting to see how many winners he will ride tomorrow and in subsequent race meetings before his main rival returns.
Following Thursday’s HKG3 Chinese Club Challenge Cup, next Wednesday we will host the season’s only Pattern race at Happy Valley, the HKG3 January Cup. After that it will be the HKG1 Hong Kong Classic Mile on 18 January, and the start of our Four-Year-Old Series - these are some exciting races that I always look forward to each year.
The last race tomorrow, the Yuen Long Handicap, is a very competitive race as many horses are with good form. Among the field there are also four Hong Kong Classic Mile and BMW Hong Kong Derby hopefuls in this Class 2 1600m event.
The tempo should be slow as there is no regular leader in the race, which makes the result even more difficult to predict. The slow pace should give horses in the front of the field an advantage. Awkwardly drawn Flame Hero will have to work early to get across in the front and is the most likely leader which will help his chances. Mr Gnocchi can take the box seat with Wonderful Guy or Winning Leader can join him. Beauty Only should be well placed while promising Giant Treasure has the risk of being trapped wide. Helene Happy Star, Santa Fe Sun and Ho In One have to come from the back.
Giant Treasure and Helene Happy Star are both working very well, especially the latter horse as it should improve further with going up in distance from 1200m in his last start, to a more suitable 1600m. Both horses are my first choices, with Thunder Fantasy close behind. The chances of Beauty Only should not be underestimated, as well as for Flame Hero who will be dangerous as with the slow pace.
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