I believe many of you are now celebrating with your mothers and families at such a special date today. Like you all in Hong Kong, the Mother's Day is also a very important date for all Germans. In Germany, everybody will celebrate with their mothers and loved ones today and everything else has to come second. I also celebrated with my mother when I was in Germany, as she was the one who always created a very harmonious atmosphere in my family and I had an extremely good relationship with her. She gave me so many fond memories and I really miss her laughters.
Our Club also cares a lot about our community and at the Mother's Day today, I'm delighted to have another opportunity to bring more warmth and share these great moments with those mothers, their children and their families in Tin Shui Wai.
There I will attend a Mother's Day Carnival themed as "Honour our Mothers, Welcome our Motherland's first Olympics". With the event co-host by our Club and Yuen Long District Council, some 29 non-government organisations in the district will be joining us to design game stalls and staging various performances for residents there. All children attending this carnival can make their own instant gifts for their mothers in our do-it-yourself handicraft workshops, while they and their families can also take photos with our cute Shetland ponies, enjoying their happy moments free of charge.
I always feel proud and grateful for working in the Club, as I have been given lots of opportunity to participate in this kind of meaningful and charitable events. The Club has launched few projects and events in assisting the Tin Shui Wai community over the past few months, most notably our plan to set up a new Telebet Centre cum Volunteer Training Centre in Tin Shui Wai in early 2009. We have also invited 200 single elderly living in the district to attend a Chinese New Year luncheon at the Happy Valley Racecourse in February. So I hope this Mother's Day Carnival – the largest community event ever hosted by the Club in Tin Shui Wai – can extend our care and concern to most members of this needy community in Hong Kong.
Apart from serving the community needs, we are also dedicated in supporting our once in a lifetime Olympic equestrian events, and the development of equestrian sport in Hong Kong. Let me also taking this opportunity to congratulate the Hong Kong Equestrian Team as I'm very pleased to learn the fantastic news that four Hong Kong Jumping riders have attained their Olympic Certificate of Capability (COC) at a special qualifier held at Hagen, Germany, last Wednesday, and qualified for our Olympic equestrian Jumping events in our home ground in Hong Kong this August.
The qualified quartet included three Club-sponsored riders – Samantha Lam, Kenneth Cheng, and Jennifer Lee. For Samantha, I can remember well that I was utterly surprised when I first met her, as she speaks German so fluently. She told me that after she became the youngest ever female rider to compete in the FEI World Cup Final, at the age of 17, she was determined to focus on her career in the equestrian sport and eventually moved to Germany for further training in the next eight years.
Kenneth shared a similar commitment to this sport as he has suspended his studies in the university last year, moving to Europe for training and taking part in various equestrian competitions in the continent in the past 12 months. Both riders have shown their diligence and devoted huge efforts over the years and I'm glad that their efforts have now paid off.
Samantha and Kenneth will now partner with Club-sponsored equestrian horses Jockey Club Tresor and Jockey Club Can Do to contest in the August Olympic jumping events respectively. It's a historical moment for Hong Kong and I wish all the Hong Kong riders performing well in front of our home spectators at Sha Tin this summer.
May I also wish you all and your families enjoying yourselves a lot at the Mother's Day today. And if you and your mothers wish to have more fun and enjoying more delightful moments tomorrow, you can also come visiting the Sha Tin Racecourse to enjoy our exciting racing atmosphere, and food of various delicacies. There will have 10 races on the card tomorrow and I'll be interested to see the performances of Supernova and Warrior. Supernova ran well for 3rd in his last run and delivered a very impressive galloping action during recent trackwork; and for Warrior, I hope he could have a better performance this time when he's back to his winning distance of 1000m in Sha Tin.
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