I enjoyed last Sunday's race meeting a lot, not least because my old friend and former champion trainer Ivan Allan paid us a visit. It was good to see him back in Hong Kong again and swap news of each other's recent activities. Though Ivan was not a person easy to work with when he was a trainer and I was then Executive Director of Racing, we still managed to be good friends.
We recalled happy moments working together at Sha Tin in years gone by and this reminded me that our racecourses are not just venues for horse racing, but also places where friends can meet up and share happy reunions while enjoying some excellent food, wine and sport.
Ivan was unquestionably one of Hong Kong's finest trainers in his time, as not only did he nurture champion horses like Indigenous, Oriental Express and Mr Vitality, he also had an amazing knack for turning mediocre horses into outstanding ones. I can recall Holy Quest being one of them, as the horse failed to get any promising results at all in its first season on turf. But then Ivan tried switching it to the all-weather track and remarkably it claimed seven wins in the next two seasons.
Tonight will be one of the only two Sha Tin Wednesday night meetings this season that feature our all-weather track. Racing on dirt in Hong Kong has never been as common as turf racing, though it remains the mainstream surface and most popular form of racing in North America, and the world's richest race - the US$6 million Dubai World Cup - is also run on dirt.
Despite this, we still schedule a consistent number of races on the all-weather track each season, so as to give those horses with different abilities more options. Byron, from John Size's stable, is one such horse that I remember well as it won five times on the all-weather surface last season.
These races also help accumulating more racing form and performance records for horses that have shown their calibre in the dirt track, for racing fans' future reference. We believe that arranging these all-weather track meetings offer both our racing fans and horses more choices and options. It also gives our racing more interest and variety, and I think that's how racing should be.
In tonight's card, there are some horses with decent performances recently, such as Pickett and Victory Treasure. The owner of Victory Treasure, who is also the chairman of the Racehorse Owners Association Mr Wilfred Ng, has invited me to be a guest at his association's annual dinner next Monday. I want to pass my good wishes to Mr Ng for the chance of having his photo taken in the winners' circle tonight.
In response to racing fans' queries about the restoration of the Treble pool, it has already been at its final stage and I promise I will tell you more about that next week.
We have also initiated our study over Flexibet and are exploring various proposals and plans to reduce the nominated unit of each bet, but we still need more time to study this and I will update you all when progress has been made.
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