After a week's holiday in Germany, I'm now back in Hong Kong and prepared to get back to my work already. Summing up my trip home to Germany, it was nice to spend my Christmas holidays there and get together with my father, family and friends in the past few days.
As my father has been sick for a long time and cannot go outside any longer, my family and I stayed at his home and enjoyed a warm and peaceful dinner with him on Christmas Eve. We all had a really happy time that night, though in the light of my father's health, I knew that it might well be the last Christmas I shared with him.
Seeing my father's condition, and then learning the shock news that Johnnie Cruz – father of trainers Derek and Tony Cruz – had passed away on Christmas morning, was a reminder to me that we should all treasure the moments we can spend with our parents and make it a priority to set aside time with them.
Johnnie Cruz was a great horseman himself in an earlier era of Hong Kong racing and I'm sure he must have been proud of what his two sons have achieved. Again, I would like to offer the Cruz family my sincere condolences.
With the new year's coming, we'd better to be positive and look at the future. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all having a healthy and prosperous new year.
Tonight, I will take part in the Run with Your Heart charity relay race at the West Kowloon Cultural District site. This is an annual New Year's Eve event organised by the Hong Kong Elite Athletes Association to raise funds for the needy, and it's not the first time I've taken part. This year's event, however, was even more significant, as it had the special theme of "Let's get ready for the 2008 Beijing Olympics" and The Hong Kong Jockey Club was the title sponsor.
It was indeed a special event not only for the Club, but also to all of you in Hong Kong. We all in Hong Kong will enter a momentous year when the clock struck midnight tonight, as China will stage its first Olympics in summer, while Hong Kong will have the chance to share this unique experience by co-hosting the Olympic and Paralympic equestrian events.
As well as the Olympics, there are likely to be a number of other important issues coming up in 2008 that will help shape Hong Kong's future. One of them is the development of the MTR South Island Line (East), which recently received approval from the Executive Council. Although the new line will pass through Happy Valley, surprisingly the current proposal does not include a station there. We at the Club believe that a Happy Valley station would be of great benefit not only to racegoers, but also the community at large, bringing people much improved transport facilities.
It's worth remembering that Happy Valley Racecourse is frequently used on non-racedays for other sports activities and special events involving large crowds of people, something that is likely to increase in the future. As a long-standing resident of Happy Valley ourselves, we would love to see an increased convenience to the residents, and we feel it right that this project will be in the overall interests of the community.
The Club is always willing to invest and improve our racecourse facilities for racegoers. However, the Club and I believe that the Government and its franchised transport operators should be the ones to take up the lead role in transport infrastructure developments.
It seems out of the context that the Club, as a not-for-profit organisation, should be asked to subsidise a commercial entity and bear all the $1.3 billion cost for a Happy Valley station – a sum that would even exceed the HK$1.05 billion that we directly donated to more than 100 local community and charity projects last year. We hope in the coming weeks to have the opportunity of meeting the Government, MTR officials and other interested parties to explore the topic further.
But before that, I wish to put my focus back to the first race meeting in 2008. With a $12.1 million Triple Trio jackpot up for you all to grab in our race meeting tomorrow, I hope you all have a Steel Nerve (Race 5) and winning some Amazing Fortune (Race 6), and more importantly, let's Never Look Back (Race 7) but look forward to a bright future in the New Year.
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