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A day to honour

11 May 2008

I believe many of you are now celebrating with your mothers and families at such a special date today. Like you all in Hong Kong, the Mother's Day is also a very important date for all Germans. In Germany, everybody will celebrate with their mothers and loved ones today and everything else has to come second. I also celebrated with my mother when I was in Germany, as she was the one who always created a very harmonious atmosphere in my family and I had an extremely good relationship with her. She gave me so many fond memories and I really miss her laughters.

Our Club also cares a lot about our community and at the Mother's Day today, I'm delighted to have another opportunity to bring more warmth and share these great moments with those mothers, their children and their families in Tin Shui Wai.

There I will attend a Mother's Day Carnival themed as "Honour our Mothers, Welcome our Motherland's first Olympics". With the event co-host by our Club and Yuen Long District Council, some 29 non-government organisations in the district will be joining us to design game stalls and staging various performances for residents there. All children attending this carnival can make their own instant gifts for their mothers in our do-it-yourself handicraft workshops, while they and their families can also take photos with our cute Shetland ponies, enjoying their happy moments free of charge.

I always feel proud and grateful for working in the Club, as I have been given lots of opportunity to participate in this kind of meaningful and charitable events. The Club has launched few projects and events in assisting the Tin Shui Wai community over the past few months, most notably our plan to set up a new Telebet Centre cum Volunteer Training Centre in Tin Shui Wai in early 2009. We have also invited 200 single elderly living in the district to attend a Chinese New Year luncheon at the Happy Valley Racecourse in February. So I hope this Mother's Day Carnival – the largest community event ever hosted by the Club in Tin Shui Wai – can extend our care and concern to most members of this needy community in Hong Kong.

Apart from serving the community needs, we are also dedicated in supporting our once in a lifetime Olympic equestrian events, and the development of equestrian sport in Hong Kong. Let me also taking this opportunity to congratulate the Hong Kong Equestrian Team as I'm very pleased to learn the fantastic news that four Hong Kong Jumping riders have attained their Olympic Certificate of Capability (COC) at a special qualifier held at Hagen, Germany, last Wednesday, and qualified for our Olympic equestrian Jumping events in our home ground in Hong Kong this August.

The qualified quartet included three Club-sponsored riders – Samantha Lam, Kenneth Cheng, and Jennifer Lee. For Samantha, I can remember well that I was utterly surprised when I first met her, as she speaks German so fluently. She told me that after she became the youngest ever female rider to compete in the FEI World Cup Final, at the age of 17, she was determined to focus on her career in the equestrian sport and eventually moved to Germany for further training in the next eight years.

Kenneth shared a similar commitment to this sport as he has suspended his studies in the university last year, moving to Europe for training and taking part in various equestrian competitions in the continent in the past 12 months. Both riders have shown their diligence and devoted huge efforts over the years and I'm glad that their efforts have now paid off.

Samantha and Kenneth will now partner with Club-sponsored equestrian horses Jockey Club Tresor and Jockey Club Can Do to contest in the August Olympic jumping events respectively. It's a historical moment for Hong Kong and I wish all the Hong Kong riders performing well in front of our home spectators at Sha Tin this summer.

May I also wish you all and your families enjoying yourselves a lot at the Mother's Day today. And if you and your mothers wish to have more fun and enjoying more delightful moments tomorrow, you can also come visiting the Sha Tin Racecourse to enjoy our exciting racing atmosphere, and food of various delicacies. There will have 10 races on the card tomorrow and I'll be interested to see the performances of Supernova and Warrior. Supernova ran well for 3^rd in his last run and delivered a very impressive galloping action during recent trackwork; and for Warrior, I hope he could have a better performance this time when he's back to his winning distance of 1000m in Sha Tin.

Achieving one's goals takes a lot of dedication

7 May 2008

Just two months after trainer John Moore attained the amazing feat of 1,000 career wins in Hong Kong, our seven-time champion jockey Douglas Whyte created a further new chapter in Hong Kong's racing history last weekend. He became the first jockey to surpass the 1,000-win mark in Hong Kong after scoring a four-timer at Sha Tin on Sunday.

The Club presented him with 10 specially commissioned and framed gold coins to commemorate this remarkable achievement. It has taken this South African horseman just 11 seasons to reach this milestone, which when you think about it, means he has averaged more than 90 winners a year.

Though some might argue that Whyte has had the benefit of horses with good chances in many of his races, I think this landmark actually shows the results of his hardworking. It's clear that his winners have not all come easily or merely through luck. Rather, they reflect his diligence and determination to strive for excellence throughout his riding career in Hong Kong.

Like Whyte's passion for the sport of horse racing over the years, the Club has a dedication for contributing to the community and local charities. In addition to donating well over than HK$1 billion a year directly to charitable and community projects, the Club is a major contributor to the public purse through its huge betting duty payments.

Inland Revenue Commissioner Alice Lau was reported on Monday as saying that in 2007/08 fiscal year, betting duty accounted for some HK$13.04 billion of the total HK$200.6 billion tax revenue received, an 8.3 per cent increase from the previous year.

What is even more interesting is that betting duty is the only form of revenue forecast to increase in 2008/09, rising a further 1 per cent to HK$13.13 billion, as all other sources will be affected by the tax concessions announced in the last Budget. This shows what a reliable and stable source of income betting duty provides for the Government coffers, in comparison with other sources like salaries tax which is projected to fall by 30 per cent.

Our horse racing activities are the primary contributor to this as they generated HK$8.41 billion in betting duty last season, a 9.2 per cent increase. In fact, we have guaranteed to pay at least HK$8 billion a year for three years from 2006/07, as part of the betting duty reform package agreed with Government in 2006. This broadly represents about HK$100 million in duty payments for every single one of our race meetings.

This is not a small amount, nor an easy target for the Club to maintain year after year. Like Douglas Whyte's achievement, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. I do hope the Government will continue supporting and recognising the value of our racing industry, as apart from these fiscal contributions, it helps generates a lot of other income for Hong Kong, such as tourism revenue. Our night race meetings at Happy Valley are especially popular with overseas visitors due to the unique glamour and atmosphere you can experience there.

Tonight will see another of those wonderful meetings at our city racetrack and we have eight races lined up for you all. I will be interested to see the performances of Sunny Golf and Hurricane Way. Both horses overcame bad draws in their last starts to earn a close finish. I hope these two horses can maintain their good performances tonight.

New type of history created on Sha Tin turf

3 May 2008

The Beijing Olympic Games will start in less than 100 days' time. Yesterday, Hong Kong had the honour of being the first city on Chinese soil to host the Olympic Torch Relay, and it made me feel really proud and happy to witness the Olympic flame make a successful visit to our Sha Tin Racecourse and Olympic equestrian venues, especially with our Chairman, Club Steward and top home-grown jockey Howard Cheng taking part in the Olympic Torch Relay there.

This was truly a historic moment for the Club as not only it was the Olympic Flame's first visit to a racecourse, it also marked the first time that a racecourse has been incorporated into an Olympic equestrian venue. With TV coverage going out to a global audience, the occasion gave us the chance to tell the world loud and proud that Hong Kong is all ready for the Games.

Recently, we've set up a number of special Olympic decorations around the racecourse like the Equine Avenue and the Flag Boulevard. They served as a great background when the torchbearers ran through these artistic settings, and I must say the TV images looked very impressive. I was especially delighted to see our leading local jockey Howard Cheng taking part in the torch relay, carrying the torch round the racetrack aboard an equestrian horse. It's a great honour for him and I think he carried off the assignment very well, even though his riding style was a bit different from normal!

Going back to racing matters, I promised you earlier that I'd update on our replacement meeting for the one called off on 20 April. I can now share with you the news that we're planning to arrange a night meeting on Wednesday 14 May, subject to approval from the Government which is still currently pending. We've also notified the Government about our simulcast on the Singapore Airlines International Cup on Sunday 18 May. While Floral Pegasus is likely be running in this richest race in the Lion City, we may well have two local horses in the KrisFlyer International Sprint, Absolute Champion and Sanziro. As we're restricted to receiving bets from just 10 simulcast races over the entire season, we left with no choice but to struggle on which of these two simulcast races we should nominate for accepting bets.

Similar restrictions are rare among the racing industries of other countries, and this Government policy prevents us from bringing to local racing fans some of the world's most representative and watchable races, like the Triple Crown series in the US, the Golden Slipper Stakes in Australia, and the Epsom Derby and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in the UK. This policy is actually jeopardising the development of our racing industry and restricting the choices for our racing public. But I'm encouraged to know that I'm not alone in holding this view, as hundreds of you have offered me your supportive comments after I raised the issue in this blog a few weeks ago. I hope I can count on your continued support, and I look forward to hearing more opinions from your all in the future.

Tomorrow, our racehorses will once again be the focus of attention at Sha Tin, and we have lined up 10 exciting races for you. In the Group 3 Queen Mother Memorial Cup, I will be paying my attention to the performances of Ever Bright and I hope to see if he can repeat last year's success in this trophy. Me Tsui's Tycoon Taylor has also shown improvements in recent runs and I will be interested to see if he can perform even better with his good draw tomorrow.

MESSAGE TO CEO

I enjoy living in Hong Kong which is dynamic, competitive and has a can-do spirit. I am lucky to combine my hobbies, horse racing and football in my job. In this blog I will share with you periodically my thoughts on my work and life in Hong Kong. Your views are welcome but I may not be able to respond to every one of them.

- May - 2008 (3)
- April - 2008 (8)
- March - 2008 (8)
- February - 2008 (7)
- January - 2008 (8)
- December - 2007 (8)
- November - 2007 (8)
- October - 2007 (7)
- September - 2007 (7)