Over the years, the Club has been dedicated to supporting different community programmes that can meet Hong Kong's evolving social needs. But we always aim to keep doing more, and yesterday the Club's Charities Division announced a series of new projects for the coming year, with a focus on arousing public awareness of heritage conservation and the environment, as well as helping ethnic minority groups to form social organisations of their own.
To my mind the Government must always take a lead role in these issues of community concern, but we at the Club feel we can contribute proactively by launching these community education projects. While Government has the responsibility of putting a suitable planning and legislative framework in place, the Club can help build public awareness, so as to generate greater momentum for these issues in the longer term.
It's important to emphasise that none of these social development programmes would be possible without the continued success of horse racing in Hong Kong, so I hope that different stakeholders in our society will understand this important linkage and give support to our further development of the sport, so as to ensure its future sustainability.
One of our key initiatives to sustain the development of our racing industry is the nurturing of home-grown riding talent.
Back in July, the Club's Racing Development Board sent five racing trainees to Australia to receive further training and gain overseas racing experience. I was delighted to learn that one of the five, David Mo, netted a double from his five rides at the Surat Racecourse last Saturday, following on from his first career win in Queensland just 10 days earlier.
Another racing trainee Kevin Leung, whose elder brother Keith made his Hong Kong debut at Sha Tin last week, also scored his maiden victory in a 2,100m handicap race at the Hobart Racecourse, Tasmania, last Sunday. It's great to know that these two promising rookies have got their riding careers Down Under off to flying starts.
In 2005, while I was serving as the Club’s Executive Director of Racing, I was one of those who initiated the founding of the Racing Development Board. I’m glad to see it has achieved such remarkable progress over these few years, as the outstanding performances of these young riders have shown that our approach to rider training is paying off. I hope that this can offer some insight in setting a right approach for the development of other local sports, particularly football, as it will probably be a good model to follow.
As a further means of developing our racing industry, it is also our aim to build stronger relationships with the business sector. There will be a new commercial partner, BNP Paribas, linked up with the Club for the first time tonight by sponsoring this evening's race meeting at the Happy Valley. It's encouraging to see this renowned international banking group, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, associate itself with Hong Kong's longest-established sport.
Although Typhoon Hagupit skirted past Hong Kong last night, bringing 43 millimetres of rainfall to the Happy Valley area overnight, it was fortunate that it didn't cause any damage to our racecourse facilities and our racetrack remains in good shape. With the current weather condition, our races can go ahead as scheduled tonight.
With the track likely to be softened by rain, I will be interested to see the performances of Palette the Best and Yankee. Palette the Best had a good run at a rain-affected Sha Tin track in his last run last season. This time he has been given a good draw in Gate 1 and let's see if he will deliver an even better performance tonight. Caspar Fownes-trained Yankee snatched two wins, including a victory in a 1,650m race at Happy Valley, in his campaign last year. He will again be partnered by Darren Beadman and let's see if the horse can repeat that success at the same distance tonight. Meanwhile, I will not be too surprised if two rain-affected track performers - Fat Dragon and Eye Witness – are giving another decent run at existing track going tonight.
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