Our Club Members have always played a vital role in the Club's development. It is their participation in the sport of horse racing, along with their staunch support for our membership services over the years, that has driven the Club forward and helped it flourish to its existing scale and status.
We continue to put a strong focus on providing top quality membership services, and have invested substantial resources into upgrading Members' facilities in the past 12 months. As well as carrying out refurbishment work in the Members' Stands at both racecourses, we opened a new Clubhouse in Beijing in April which for the first time extends our membership services beyond Hong Kong. This superb new facility gives all Club Members the chance to enjoy quality hospitality services when making business or leisure trips to Beijing.
Apart from this, we always place great importance on developing closer relationships with our Club Members, which is why we initiated the Member's Day in 2005/06 season. It has since become an annual event and provides a great opportunity for the Club to foster closer bonds with its Members.
This year's Member's Day will be held at Sha Tin Racecourse tomorrow and we have again prepared a host of special events and programmes for Club Members, their families and children. While they each will receive a special brooch as an entry gift, they can also join our Members Cup Guess & Win Game to win prizes like free buffets at the racecourses and valuable binoculars. For their younger family members, there will also be games and photo-taking session with Shetland Ponies. So I hope they will all have lots of fun there tomorrow.
Coincidentally, it's also Father's Day, so I believe that a lot of fathers would like to have a gathering with their family members to celebrate this special day in the racecourse. As Good Ba Ba's owner John Yuen said in a recent interview, many sports enthusiasts are also good fathers. I know it was the influence of their families that led a number of our young racehorse owners in Hong Kong to develop an interest in the sport, with some even taking up leisure riding as well. In my perspective, I think horse racing is a sport that's suitable for all ages. It can provide everyone with an occasion for family gathering, and even foster closer relationship among the family.
I'm sure some of you have also watched the Euro 2008 football tournament matches these past two weeks. I was rather disappointed with the performance of Germany in their defeat to Croatia on Thursday. They did not play as smartly as the Croatian players and I have to admit they were the second best team on the night. But I still hold out strong hopes that Germany can progress to the knockout stages with an improved performance against tournament co-hosts Austria in their final group match in Vienna next Monday.
Our feature race on tomorrow's Sha Tin programme will be the Premier Cup – the final pattern race this season, let's see which will be the last pattern winner. For the remaining 10 races on the card, I will be paying special attention to the performance of Super Pegasus and Super Baby.
Super Pegasus ran a promising second after a three months break last time and I believe he should be benefited from that start. With a low draw again in his winning trip, I will be expecting Super Pegasus to deliver a good run tomorrow. Super Baby finished quite well in the same distance last run after he jumped relatively slow at the start. With the blinkers on the first time, I look forward to seeing an improving performance from him tomorrow afternoon.
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