Kung Hei Fat Choy! I hope all of you are enjoying a very happy Lunar New Year holiday with your families and friends. Let me take this opportunity to wish you all the best of luck, prosperity and good health in the coming year.
The Year of the Ox saw a steady revival in the local economy, so I hope this will continue in the Year of the Tiger, and more importantly, that everybody in the community will be able to benefit from the city's economic development.
It's been a prosperous past year for our horse racing activities, too, as our top horses have achieved some excellent results on both the domestic and international fronts. Also, there has been an increase in the horse racing turnover so far this season, though, the gross margin shared by the Club is significantly low. I hope that our racing business and racing heroes can do even better this year.
In recent years, our racecourses have become a favourite destination for both local residents and visitors during the holiday period. The Chinese New Year Raceday is always especially popular as people like to come along to Sha Tin not only to enjoy some exciting racing and try out their luck in the New Year, but most of all to feel the happy and festive atmosphere.
This year our New Year celebrations will not just be limited to our race meeting tomorrow. To continue our celebrations of the Club's 125th anniversary and share the festive mood with tourists and the local community, we've just participated in the International Chinese New Year Night Parade at Tsim Sha Tsui last night, a popular and colourful event organised annually by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
This will be followed this weekend by a two-day Equine Fun Fest we're staging at Penfold Park on 19 and 20 February. I'm pleased to say we've had an overwhelming response to this event as over 13,000 people have already registered online in the hope of getting admission tickets. If you haven't secured your tickets yet, though, there'll be another chance at our Chinese New Year Raceday as Fun Fest tickets – along with pure gold horseshoes – are among the prizes on offer with the scratch-and-win cards that racegoers will receive on admission.
Another good reason to be at Sha Tin early tomorrow is that as always for this festive meeting, we will have a huge array of special on-course programmes laid on for you to enjoy. Popular TV artiste Chermaine Sheh and singer Ella Koon will be joining our pre-race variety show in the Parade Ring, singing New Year songs to get the festivities off to a tuneful start. You will also be able to get some fortune tips for the Year of the Tiger from feng shui master Mak Ling-ling and visit festive attractions like the peach blossom on the forecourt and a Fortune Market and gold artefacts exhibition on the concourse. And the closing parade featuring top international performing groups is definitely not to be missed.
However, it won't only be a day of festive fun, as there'll be some very serious horse racing going on, too. One of our two feature races will be the Group 2 Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Derby Trial – the second leg of this year's four-year-old series – where you can watch some of our top four-year-olds in action in the run-up to the Derby itself next month. After the impressive win of Beauty Flash in the first leg, the Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Classic Mile a month ago, I'm sure that many racing fans will be putting their focus on this Tony Cruz-trained runner again this time, and whether he will make it two classics in a row tomorrow for his owner Simon Kwok, who previously won the Derby Trial with Hello Pretty in 2006.
John Moore's Derby hopeful Irian also performs nicely in his debut as he finished fifth at the shorter distance of 1400m. I think the Derby Trial's distance of 1800m should be more suitable for him. Despite his five previous starts in Germany and France all ran on softer ground, I think he can handle the firmer track in Hong Kong, too. So I'll watch how this runner performs when he participates in a Hong Kong pattern race for the first time tomorrow.
Personally, given his outstanding performance in last start, I think Beauty Flash is clearly the horse to beat in this group 2 event, but the rainy weather and softer track could be his biggest challenge as it could play in favour of horses finishing off the pace! Other runners like Tuscan Spirit, Chater Way, Super Satin are in great forms, along with other horses like Irian, Super Pistachio and King Dancer which are all with good credential, I think they are capable to challenge for the runners-up in this race.
The 10 other races on the card promise to be equally exciting and in another feature race of the day - the Chinese New Year Cup, I'm interested to see how Presto performs. This John Size-trained runner is performing very well in his recent starts as he snatched a winner and a runner-up finish over 1400m. Featuring in the same distance tomorrow, I think he should have a good chance to win this race. However, other opponents like Express Win, Operation Secret and Fair Trade, who will be coming back after a long lay off, can also give Presto a test in this race.
Let me remind you the first race will start at 12.25 pm tomorrow. So please come to Sha Tin Racecourse early and make sure you don't miss any of the racing action or wonderful on-course programmes. See you there!
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