Even though I grew up in Europe where the winter weather can get quite harsh, I must admit that I haven't enjoyed the cold, wet and miserable conditions of the past few days at all! It's a particular shame that this unusually chilly spell has coincided with Chinese New Year, when people like to get outdoors and have fun with their families and friends. On Wednesday afternoon when we held our Chinese New Year Raceday, the temperatures at Sha Tin Racecourse fell to as low as 6 or 7 degrees Celsius.
Yet despite the wintry conditions, I felt warm and touched by the fact that more than 78,000 local racegoers still braved the weather to attend our races. I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all these very loyal racing fans, along with the many others who participated in the races at home or through other channels.
In the end, the day’s turnover still reached HK$1.22 billion, a decrease of only 3 per cent from last year’s figure, and the second highest CNY raceday turnover we had since 2002. To me, this is an extremely good result in the circumstances, and a great start for the Club to the Year of the Dragon.
The day was not entirely free of other hiccups, though, some customers encountered an unusually slow response from our online betting service for about an hour. Fortunately, normal service was resumed quite soon, but impacts and inconvenience have been caused to some of our customers and racing public. The problem was caused by a failure of one of our service providers which had an impact on our eWin channel. My colleagues at the IT department have looked into the matter seriously and already followed up with them. With our online and interactive betting services now becoming increasingly popular among our customers, I know how important it is to our customers to maintain high reliability levels on such service, so please rest assured that we'll do our best to ensure this.
On the sporting side, we saw some very close and exciting finishes on Wednesday, especially in the two feature races where Sweet Orange held Fay Fay to win the HKG1 Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Classic Mile by a neck, while the unbeaten Glorious Days surged past Bullish Champion in the last few strides to take the Chinese New Year Cup by a short head.
For the trainer of Sweet Orange, David Ferraris, it was an especially sweet moment, as this was his first G1 success in almost five years since Vengeance Of Rain won the Dubai Sheema Classic back in March 2007. So the strong emotion he showed at the presentation ceremony is easily understandable. It was an electrifying winning performance that must give him high hopes of further top-level success with this horse. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing Sweet Orange square off again with Fay Fay in the Mercedes-Benz HK Classic Cup in mid-February.
I'm pleased to say that our racing fans can enjoy Group 1 action for the second time in five days tomorrow, as we will be staging the Stewards’ Cup on our Sha Tin turf. First run in 1954, the Stewards’ Cup has also served as the first leg of the Hong Kong Triple Crown series since 1991. John Size has been its most successful trainer in the past 10 years having won the race on four occasions, while Tony Cruz is close behind with three successes, including Beauty Flash last year.
There is still only one horse in Hong Kong's racing history to have won all three legs of the Triple Crown in the same season, and that was the great River Verdon in 1993/94. Although John Size-trained Super Kid also won all three legs of this prestigious series in his career, he did so over two seasons so could not match the illustrious achievement of his predecessor.
This varying distances of the three legs between 1600 and 2400 metres makes the Triple Crown a particularly demanding challenge, but we have some eminently qualified contenders from our middle-distance and stayers' ranks this year, with nine of the 14 runners feature in the recently published 2011 World Thoroughbred Rankings, including reigning Horse of the Year Ambitious Dragon, Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Cup winner California Memory and CXHK Vase runner-up Thumbs Up. So tomorrow's Stewards' Cup over the shortest distance looks like being a very exciting battle.
This year’s Stewards’ Cup has attracted HK's finest racehorses and is a real showcase of the quality of Hong Kong racing. With the expected good to slow pace, it will especially help Able One who should be able to control the pace together with Sight Winner. Able One is working well and is the choice of Darren Beadman after his cracking final gallop on Thursday, in which he went much better than Xtension. If Able One gets his way in front, he will be very difficult to run down, even for Ambitious Dragon and California Memory who are both working extremely well and able to run very fast sectionals in the last 400m. Both are for me at least a place chance! Ambitious Dragon should find cover in midfield, and I am not sure what tactic Tony Cruz will apply on California Memory with the draw in 2 – either keeping him at the back and hoping to get a run on the inside, or riding him closer to the pace as he did in the CXHK Cup to give California Memory a chance to keep closer to Able One and have an earlier run! Irian is working well but the pace will not help him, and to come from the back of the field will make it not easy! The same applies to Thumbs Up who is working very well but his faster acceleration over 1600m than Irian could make him having an outsider chance for a top-three finish.
Two-time Stewards’ Cup winner Electronic Unicorn was once a terrific miler in Hong Kong and a handicap will be run in his honour in Race 9. This race, as a Class 3 event over 1400m, will see some very interesting young horses in the field. The expected pace is good which gives every horse a good chance, with Way May Star leading with My Goal. Way May Star is an upcoming three-year-old which has shown promise and is a win and place chance for me. The horse with the most potential over this distance is Real Specialist which is unbeaten in his two starts last season, with the second one defeating Sweet Orange, winner of the Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Classic Mile last Wednesday. This four-year-old had a lameness problem at the end of the last season and had another set back in the end of October till December but his two trials since then were very impressive. His draw in Gate 9 and the good pace put him at risk to be wide in the first bend, but I rate him very high and expect him to overcome these obstacles to win the race. You Know I Win is another young horse who ran well in his debut and his work has improved. Viva Freedom was unlucky in his last start and is still in good form for a place.
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