In my home country of Germany, everybody will be having great fun this Friday as they will be celebrating Germany's National Day - the Unity Day (Tag Der Deutschen Einheit). This festivity commemorates the reunification of West and East Germany on 3 October 1990, almost a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989. Since then, mass celebration events have been held every year in Berlin, which is now once again the German capital.
This year the largest celebration event will be held at the historic Brandenburg Gate, where people can enjoy a gala party with live entertainment, food, drink and lots of dancing. In addition to the traditional celebrations in Berlin, each year in rotation one of the German federal states stages special celebration events for Unity Day. This year the port of Hamburg will be the host city and a three-day programme of activities is being staged there starting on Friday.
I remembered very well that I was at home watching TV to witness the reunification of West and East Germany in 1990. And at a week later, I took my first visit to East Germany to visit the Hoppegarten Racecourse in East Berlin – the former centre of German racing and one of the most historic racetrack in Germany. At that time, the racing fraternity was enthusiastic about the reunification and we also hosted a big party in celebrating this joyful moment.
This week is also a big week for Hong Kong as today, everyone will be celebrating China's National Day, marking the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. While some of you will no doubt rise early to attend the flag-raising ceremony at Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai, I'm sure the more popular family event will be the National Day fireworks show later that evening over Victoria Harbour.
You can also enjoy a programme of festivities in the afternoon at Sha Tin Racecourse, as before our traditional National Day race meeting begins, the Club will host a special show in the Parade Ring, starting at midday. There will be haunting string music from the Inner Mongolia National Song and Dance Troupe, spectacular dancing by the Jianshi Dance Troupe and a special performance by renowned Chinese soprano Wang Wei of the Chinese National Opera House, who will lead the national anthem as well as singing some of the classic songs.
And, of course, you should not miss the 10 exciting races we have lined up in our programme today. For the feature race of the day, the National Day Cup, I will be interested to see the performances of those contenders from John Moore stable which has an incredible win strike rate of 28 percent so far this season. In fact, both Joyful Winner and Sunny King ran good in their first start in the season, and should be benefited from that race. Besides, Kings Falcon is another upcoming 3-year old in Moore stable and I'm looking forward to seeing how he performs in his first time running on good to firm going at 1400m.
In the other races, I will pay special attention to the Pai Tau Handicap. I may be perceived as being biased in favour of the Racing Club Horse Young Label but I think the Racing Club Members will have a lot of fun with this horse. With one win and one second in his first two starts as a 3-year old last season, he should have further improvement after the summer break.
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