HK Ready for Equine Milestone

Source: Reuters

Few spectacles in Hong Kong rival the excitement of race night, when tens of thousands of gambling-mad punters cheer wildly for horses gliding around a track ringed by rolling hills and skyscrapers.

Hong Kong's racing scene, already one of the world's finest, is poised to get even richer next week when it hosts Olympic equestrian events.

Beijing's Olympic organisers and equestrian officials decided in 2005 it was not feasible to host equine events in mainland China given the failure to establish a disease-free zone for horses.

Hong Kong was the natural choice to move in.

Along with Japan, Hong Kong's equine infrastructure ranks as Asia's best, with stabling facilities for over 1,000 race horses and two world-class race courses, one of which seats 80,000.

"It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Hong Kong and the club to be a part of the Olympics," said Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, chief executive of the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

The group has spent some $150 million building one-off Olympic equestrian facilities, including an air-conditioned training arena and stables and an 18,000-seat equestrian arena.

STRICT TESTS

The club's world-class equine anti-doping laboratory will also impose stricter-than-ever tests on the horses participating in the Games.

Horse racing is now Hong Kong's most popular form of sporting entertainment, with about one in three adults drawn to the races. The Jockey Club raked in a record $8.7 billion last year and drew two million spectators to 78 meets.

"It reflects the Hong Kong lifestyle; it's fast, it's very competitive and success-orientated," said Engelbrecht-Bresges.

Horse-racing first gained a foothold in Hong Kong in the 1840s in its fledgling years as a British colony.

Early British settlers wasted no time in scouting a sizeable flat racecourse site on mountainous Hong Kong island, ultimately draining a swamp teeming with malarial mosquitoes to build it.

Comically short ponies from Mongolia were often fielded in the early years, at a time when horseracing took off across mainland China. Shanghai's Grand Stand was one of the world's largest at the time, while in Beijing in the 1860s and 1870s crowds of up to 80,000 regularly flocked to races.

Pig-tailed Chinese from shanty towns and fishing villages flocked to the races along with rickshaw pullers in bamboo hats, hawkers and coolies -- adding richness to the staid English racing traditions.

KEEN JOCKEY

Former Hong Kong governor Sir Francis Henry May was a keen jockey, breaking his leg once in a race and often seen sporting a leather crop and riding gear.

After decades of unregulated racing, the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club was founded in 1884, but in 1918 a fire in the public stands killed over 500 people. In the 1930s, Chinese horse owners began to prevail over the British and in 1971, the club turned into a professional racing organisation.

In 1997, when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese from British rule, the club dropped its royal designation but it remains one of the city's top social establishments.

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Editor: Chen Minjie