I hope you all enjoyed watching the World Cup opening match last night. Although South Africa lost a late equaliser to Mexico and the match ended in a 1-1 draw, it was very entertaining and I enjoyed watching it. The host team showed a lot of promise and I think they are capable of getting a better result against Uruguay on Wednesday.
I know that many of our customers also watched this match live at the Club’s Off-course Betting Branches last night. Despite that our branches need to close at 11.30pm, which means we cannot show the whole match and our customers have to leave there before the final whistle, I was glad to learnt that all of our customers were very co-operative and I would like to again express our thanks for their understanding on this smooth operation.
Although it's difficult not to get caught up in the World Cup frenzy, I believe you all will be as concentrated on your regular jobs as you usually did! I'm in the same position as we have a lot of other important activities going on at the Jockey Club at the moment. On Thursday, I attended the International Travel Expo at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, as the Club is participating in this annual event for the first time. Reflecting the fact that our two racecourses have become very popular tourist attractions among visitors to Hong Kong, our booth at International Travel Expo has been designed in the shape of a racetrack, and I must say it looks very smart.
According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, watching the horse racing is now ranked by visitors as one of the city's top 10 "must see" attractions. Midweek racing at Happy Valley is especially popular with tourists as the atmosphere of this city-centre racetrack at night is truly a unique experience. But we get a lot of visitors coming to Sha Tin, too, especially for the major events like the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Races, which attract horse racing devotees from all over the world. Hong Kong's staging of the equestrian events of the Beijing 2008 Olympics has also drawn a lot more international attention to the city's strengths in racing and equestrian sports, and the displays of Olympic legacy items we've set up in Penfold Park has become increasingly popular with tourists, especially from the Mainland.In addition, our racecourse facilities are well suited to the staging of meetings, incentive programmes, conferences and exhibitions (known in the travel trade as the "MICE" market), which is a very important source of business for Hong Kong. So we have a lot of valuable information to share with the many thousands of travel trade representatives who will be coming here this weekend for the city's premier travel expo.
As this is our 125th Anniversary season, we are also taking the opportunity to show visitors some of the Club's other contributions to the community over the years, which include the building of Ocean Park - now a major tourist attraction in its own right. The International Travel Expo will be opened to the public this weekend, so I hope you will take the chance to go and see our booth for yourselves.
Our racing this weekend is on Saturday, and today at Sha Tin we'll begin the public voting for this season's Most Popular Horse and Most Popular Jockey. You can cast your votes at the racecourse this afternoon, or vote through our Off-Course Betting Branches or online from next Monday onwards. Either way, don't miss the opportunity, as the name of everyone who votes will go into a lucky draw with some very attractive prizes on offer, including a golden horseshoe and a travel and racing package to Japan.
Among the 10 races on today's Sha Tin card, I expect the HKU Social Sciences Alumni Handicap will be a very exciting race with some very good horses. Entrapment is obvious one of them as this three-year-old has already won five successive races and performed very well in both turf and dirt events. I’ll see if he can make it six in a row in this 1200m race today. However, I think we should not underestimate other dirt performers like Cheque Book and New Glory, and the reviving Willing Storm and Watch What Happens. Lucky Nine also showed that he’s in a sizzling form in his outstanding victory on dirt last time. He’s another runner which is capable to give Entrapment a challenge.
In the HKU Space Handicap, Mighty High delivered a wire-to-wire victory in his second start in Hong Kong. I hope he can further improve after that impressive run and let’s see if he can maintain his decent performance today. However, he must first attest to the challenge given by recent performers such as Ming Hoi Treasure, Beauty Forever and Johnson in this mile event.
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