The Hong Kong experience

In an article in the latest edition of The Thoroughbred, due out on May 1, Australian trainer Michael Freedman describes Singapore as ‘Asia for beginners’. He is talking about life in and outside racing, with the move from home made easier by twin bridges – the English language and the comfortable setting of a sport/industry that has Australians and New Zealanders sprinkled throughout; and, in some cases, on top.

Hong Kong, similarly, is a gate to a world much different yet easily entered, especially through its bigger and grander, but still exclusive, racing industry with the Hong Kong Jockey Club the only legal betting operator.

It is exclusive in that sense; and in having all its horses trained from stables on course at Sha Tin, near the city centre and racing there at weekends and at Happy Valley, a float ride away, on Hong Kong Island on Wednesday nights; and in restricting ownership of horses to club members.

But it is inclusive in welcoming visitors (punters and tourists as spectators) season-long (September-June/July) and visiting competitors of Group 1 standing, with their human entourages, including the media, for the international carnivals that are the highlight meetings – December’s four Group 1s and April’s pair, the Queen Elizabeth II Cup and Champions Mile – as well as being the main marketing tools in the HKJC’s push to legitimise itself as a world racing power.

The British heritage remains strong, so it is fitting that the club’s guests – yes, media included – are treated royally.

Competitors’ travel and accommodation costs are paid and those of the media are subsidised. Japanese and Australians are usually at the front of the queue, the Europeans not far behind and the South Africans are joining in with relish, usually through Dubai links. Americans and Singaporeans, too, are aware of benefits for hosts and guests.

Hong Kong’s racing is regimented and efficient, and it – and punting on it – is tolerated by the mainland Chinese Government because of the tax and charity dollars that flow from it.

The punter is provided with full support, from televised trackwork with horses wearing numbered saddlecloths, to compulsory weighing that shows weight variations as a potential guide to fitness levels. Multiples, rather than simple win bets, are the go. Pools are huge.

The reporters and photographers who are lured usually return, aware that the HKJC provides transport to and from the tracks (training and racing) ensuring that first-class work and play facilities make their job much easier.

This is my second April meeting and I have been to the past three December carnivals – the big days excite; and the lack of quality on track at Happy Valley in the lead-in meeting is more than compensated by tight racing on a track only a metre or two over 1400 metres around. The atmosphere under lights and the facilities on a course that appears to have been squeezed between high-rise housing and work places is pulsating. Usually, at the Valley, the rails and a leading or on-pace position are the ingredients of racing success.

Sha Tin, of course, is at the other end of the scale. It has a roomy 1900m track with a 430-metre straight that gives run-on horses every chance, and it has a magnificent under-cover mounting yard.

Both attract enthusiastic crowds in a punt-happy culture.

Travel, they say, broadens the mind, and that is true of minds more noteworthy than the minds of humble racing writers. David Hayes, Victoria’s premier trainer, has seen the racing as a ‘local’, having won two premierships in 10 seasons before returning to Australia almost four years ago.

He welcomes the chance to return with a runner on the Group 1 stage.  Niconero (B g 7, Danzero-Nicola Lass, by Scenic (IRE)) is his travel card this trip, and the always-optimistic Hayes rates the veteran as a top-three chance in the QEII Cup (2000m), a race expected to send local Viva Pataca and South African Archipenko to the wire ahead of a group (England’s Presvis, France’s Chinchon, the local Thumbs Up, and Niconero) fighting for the leftovers of the $HK14 million (about $2.8 million) purse.

Experience has taught Hayes that he and his horse will benefit from the trip, whatever the result. He talks of other stable travellers Better Loosen Up (a multiple Group 1 winner in the early1990s) and Fields Of Omagh (a dual Cox Plate winner), who were tougher and better horses after travelling. Thrived is the word Hayes used.

Niconero, too, has moved up the scale, graduating from not being out of place in Group 1 company – just – to being well and truly a member of the G1 team, with wins in the G1 Futurity Stakes at Caulfield and the G1 Australian Cup at Flemington before this double-barrel campaign – fourth place in the G1 Dubai Duty Free (1777m) in March and straight on to Hong Kong.

In both venues he has had company (racemare Tuesday Joy at Nad Al Sheba and a couple of retired racers at Sha Tin) in his quarantine barn to ensure he stays happy.

The gregarious Hayes enjoys company, too – Niconero’s co-owners Peter Devitt and Les Gordon, and old friends among the training and HKJC ranks. On the bus from his five-star hotel to trackwork on Thursday morning, Hayes was the kid in the lolly shop, almost skipping out to the trainers’ tower inside the main turf track almost two hours before Niconero was to work. (Quarantine rules mean visiting horses are stabled at the opposite end of the course to the locals and can’t be worked until the last of the 1000-plus locals stabled there is locked away.)

All week, Niconero has been aggressively happy working on the all-weather track with stable foreman Lizzie Jeffs in the saddle. “You’d never describe Niconero as a relaxed horse,” Hayes said. “He gets a bit uptight.”

Uptight is the word often used by Australian racing writers to describe John Hawkes, who has brought Dao Dao (Br g 5, Shinko Forest (IRE)-Casual Way (NZ), by Casual Lies (USA)) from Sydney to Hong Kong for the $HK12 million (about $2.4 million) Champions Mile (1600m) – the media have had a stormy relationship with the top trainer over the years.

Unlike Hayes, Hawkes is uncomfortable with the media, but on this jaunt he has been relaxed and smiling.  “How ya going, champ?” he said to a Melbourne-based photographer, and he talked to reporters about how floating horses between his Sydney and Melbourne stables had helped mature them.
Dao Dao, who, with trainer John Size, raced in Hong Kong for a year after starting in Sydney with Hawkes and before returning to him, is a stronger horse now. Hawkes said Dao Dao had more maturing to do, but, clearly, he is happy with how his charge is travelling. And he said horse and connections “didn’t come all this way for a bit of fun”.

But Hawkes is having fun, and he suggested that “hopefully in the next few years we’ll have horses good enough to travel”.

Clearly, all can benefit from experiences such as these, be they extroverts or introverts: Hayes returns refreshed and with contacts and ideas enlarged; Hawkes might find new doors opening;  and the media can widen their own and, importantly, their readers’/viewers’ horizons.