Tonight, the Club will simulcast three of the races in the Dubai World Cup for the enjoyment of Hong Kong's racing fans. This includes the Dubai Golden Shaheen, the world's joint-richest 1,200m dirt race, in which our star all-weather track performer Lucky Quality will be taking on some of the best dirt sprinters in the sport.
You may be interested to know that this season marks the 20th year of overseas race simulcasts in Hong Kong, as we began providing this service in the 1989/90 racing season. I think it's a great way of helping local racing fans enrich their knowledge of global horse racing and appreciate the top racehorses in other racing jurisdictions. It also enables our fans to give their support when Hong Kong racehorses are contesting top overseas races. However, there are quite a number of constraints on our simulcast operations at present, as existing regulations limit the Club to screening just 10 overseas race simulcasts for betting a season, all of which must be on the same days as our scheduled race meetings.
This shortcoming becomes more prominent during the summer as most major races in Europe are held during our summer break - so for example, we cannot show our fans European classic races like the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes or July Cup. I think this is a great loss for everyone here who loves the sport of racing.
This limitation also made us unable to simulcast some overseas races during the season in which Hong Kong horses are involved. Examples that spring to mind in recent years include the International Group One double achieved by our sprinter Cape of Good Hope in the Australia Stakes at Moonee Valley and the Golden Jubilee Stakes at Ascot in 2005. Worse still, these situations gave the offshore bookmakers a golden opportunity to cash in, as happened when Oriental Express and Resfa were running in the Singapore Airlines International Cup in 2000, as well as Watch What Happens' run in the Godolphin Mile in Dubai last year.
The situation has resulted in channeling the money offshore instead of keeping in Hong Kong for good cause. It's worth noting that our 10 simulcast races last season generated HK$15 million of tax revenue for the Government's treasury – an amount that is good enough for the funding of certain community projects, or could support some local social organisations for a whole year. That makes it even more frustrating that we cannot simulcast more top overseas races and thereby bring extra revenue to the public coffers and local charities.
It's been quite a number of years since the regulations on simulcasts were set. That's why I hope the Government and the political stakeholders can now take a fresh look at the situation and relax these limitations to meet racing fans present-day needs. As well as generating additional public revenue, it will create extra manpower demands that will benefit thousands of people who work as part time staff in our off-course betting branches and telephone betting, as well as those in the media industry.
Anyway, I hope you will stay tuned to your TVs tonight and give your cheers and support to Lucky Quality. But before we bring you the simulcasts from the Emirates, there are still 10 regular races to be held at Sha Tin this afternoon. I will be watching the performances of Lasker and Craig's Dragon. For Lasker, this Australian import had a better performance when he finished 5th at the mile distance in his previous start. He will be starting from Gate 1 when he's running at an extended distance of 1800m today. Let's see if this will be more suitable for him. The performance of Craig's Dragon has been very consistent this season as he won once and placed three times in his four previous starts. Today he will be featuring in the CUHK Alumni Cup Handicap, at 1200m where he won three times in his career. I hope he can maintain his great form and run nicely this afternoon.
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