I was saddened yesterday to learn about recent passing of two long-time active members of our racing community in Hong Kong – the Club's Honorary Steward Hui Chung Keung and renowned horse owner and surveyor Charles Ming Ka Fook.
Both of them were very supportive of Hong Kong racing and contributed a lot to its development. I think many of you will know Hui best as the owner of Billion Win, a former winner of the Stewards Cup and a very successful Hong Kong International Sale graduate, though in fact he had owned dozens of horses over the years, since first becoming associated with the Club in the 1950s. Actually, the whole Hui family has had a strong relationship with the Club and horse racing for a long, long time as many of his family members are great horse lovers and owners.
To me, CK was an excellent Steward to work with and he was a great sportsman even at times when his horses were losing. So did his wife Patricia as she's one of the most caring wives you can dream of. I love to see him when he was hosting his guests at our Stewards' Box at race meetings in the racecourse.
Charles Ming was also one of the Club's long-time horse owners, being perhaps best known for his co-ownership of horses like Yellow Diamond, Lucky Diamond and Red Diamond. On behalf of the Club, I would like to convey our condolences to the families of these two true racing men.
It can never be emphasised too strongly that without the support of owners such as these who are prepared to invest in top-quality horses, Hong Kong racing could never have achieved the world-class standards that it has today. It's especially timely to remember this as tonight at Happy Valley Racecourse, we will be announcing the selected runners for the premier event on the domestic racing programme – 2008 Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Derby – the classic race on 16 March that will identify our next generation of world-beating horses.
I know many of you are looking forward to the rematch of two already qualified runners – the Hong Kong Classic Mile winner Helene Mascot and Hong Kong Derby Trial winner Green Birdie – in this most prestigious race for our four-year-olds. It will be an interesting duel but I think that if the promising John Size-trained prospect Dao Dao is also included in the line-up, he will provide a huge threat to these two favourites.
Well, it's just part of my guessing and, in a matter of hours, all of you will know which 14 horses will be selected to run in the Derby. Perhaps it's better for me to put my focus back on our eight races at Happy Valley tonight. I'll be interested to see the performance of Key Winner in Race 4 and Master Gunner in Race 6, as both of them have nice performance in their last starts at Happy Valley respectively. In particular, I'd love to see if Master Gunner can help his trainer John Moore, who is now just three wins away from getting his 1,000th career win, to push closer to this phenomenal career mark.
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