Hong Kong International Day
December 8th 2007 11:59
The eyes of the racing world shift to Hong Kong for their International Day at Sha Tin tomorrow.
Horses from Europe and Australia have travelled to Asia’s financial capital for the huge race meeting with over 75 million Hong Kong dollars up for grabs.
Hong Kong has an odd type of racing industry where it is centrally run from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, from the allocation of the limited amount of jockey and trainer licences to the ruling of all betting with an iron fist. Bookmakers are illegal in Hong Kong and all wagering goes through the club run totalisator. Horses also live in stables that resemble apartment blocks with three four and five levels of stabling for horses all on course at either Sha Tin or Happy Valley
Hong Kong is also unique by the fact that the Jockey Club even travels the world to all the major stables, looking for horses to purchase to fill the racing population. There is no breeding of racehorses in Hong Kong and all racing stock is imported from the major breeding centres in Australia, New Zealand , Europe and the United States.
Nearly all of the opinions in this article have been formulated by research performed using the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s home site www.hkjc.com/english . This site is a punter’s dream, it has absolutely every statistic and piece of information a punter could want to look at. The HKJC have even attended to the detail of providing a list of the horses’ former racing names in their original countries of racing.
The HKJC, by the sheer quality and quantity of information, actually enhance a punter’s appreciation of how well they run their racing. Their philosophy seems to be one of trying to assist the punter to back a winner. Of course, that is motivated by a self interest of trying to stimulate wagering and punters re-investing. That is a vastly different philosophy than that shown by Victorian racing authorities who are shamelessly gouging the betting fraternity and betting service providers by even charging them to put information up on form databases. The providers have no option than to pass on costs to punters in the form of increased subscription fees.
A punter could access the official Racing Victoria form site, but with all due respects an intelligent toddler with a broken crayon could deliver a better form guide than RVL. This smacks of an attitude of trying to give punters as little information as possible to work with to decide on their bets, thus losing more money to the TABs. But enough of that, I will cover this disgraceful situation in greater depth in another article.
The first international race for decision is the Hong Kong Sprint over 1200 metres. Three out of the four races for international runners have only a couple of chances. The Sprint only has three, the local favourite Sacred Kingdom, last year’s winner Absolute Champion and Australian superstar Miss Andretti. It is worth noting that every single winner of this event in it’s history has been Australian bred, a remarkable performance for our breeding industry. All of the three main chances this year are also Australian bred.
Sacred Kingdom and Absolute Champion met in the HK Sprint trial with Sacred Kingdom winning by a couple of lengths but I think Absolute Champion can reverse the result. In the trial Absolute Champion had a heap of trouble getting clear in the straight and by the time he did the bird had flown. He also had to give Sacred Kingdom 5 pounds or (2.25 kilos) in weight. Miss Andretti has had no luck with drawing the outside barrier in this event and another factor against her here is that she does not get the full 2.5 kilos advantage she gets in Australia under weight for age conditions. In Hong Kong she only gets 4 pounds or 1.75 kilos in allowance from the males. Against these two Hong Kong stars that .75 kilos may make all the difference between winning and losing. Being Australian I sincerely hope she wins, but as a punter the value may lie with backing Absolute Champion each way.
The HK Vase sees Dylan Thomas from Europe entered. He is equal second on the world racehorse rankings with a rating of 128. That is 6 pounds better than Viva Pataca who will go around at short odds in the HK Cup. He was part of Aidan O’Brien’s nightmare at the Breeder’s Cup meeting in the US in November, being beaten in the Breeders Cup Turf but that race was run on a quagmire.Forgive that run. Back on top of the ground in Honkers , Dylan Thomas gets his chance to show why he is rated so highly.
The Mile is impossible for punters, so I won’t be touching it and the Hong Kong Cup has two chances, Ramonti and Viva Pataca. Vengeance of Rain has a pretty good record but trails 3-1 head to head with Viva Pataca. Perhaps the best thing to do is to take a trifecta with Ramonti and Viva Pataca to fill the first two placings and Vengeance of Rain to grab third. Hopefully Ramonti can roll Viva Pataca to put some value in the dividend.
Horses from Europe and Australia have travelled to Asia’s financial capital for the huge race meeting with over 75 million Hong Kong dollars up for grabs.
Hong Kong has an odd type of racing industry where it is centrally run from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, from the allocation of the limited amount of jockey and trainer licences to the ruling of all betting with an iron fist. Bookmakers are illegal in Hong Kong and all wagering goes through the club run totalisator. Horses also live in stables that resemble apartment blocks with three four and five levels of stabling for horses all on course at either Sha Tin or Happy Valley
Hong Kong is also unique by the fact that the Jockey Club even travels the world to all the major stables, looking for horses to purchase to fill the racing population. There is no breeding of racehorses in Hong Kong and all racing stock is imported from the major breeding centres in Australia, New Zealand , Europe and the United States.
Nearly all of the opinions in this article have been formulated by research performed using the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s home site www.hkjc.com/english . This site is a punter’s dream, it has absolutely every statistic and piece of information a punter could want to look at. The HKJC have even attended to the detail of providing a list of the horses’ former racing names in their original countries of racing.
The HKJC, by the sheer quality and quantity of information, actually enhance a punter’s appreciation of how well they run their racing. Their philosophy seems to be one of trying to assist the punter to back a winner. Of course, that is motivated by a self interest of trying to stimulate wagering and punters re-investing. That is a vastly different philosophy than that shown by Victorian racing authorities who are shamelessly gouging the betting fraternity and betting service providers by even charging them to put information up on form databases. The providers have no option than to pass on costs to punters in the form of increased subscription fees.
A punter could access the official Racing Victoria form site, but with all due respects an intelligent toddler with a broken crayon could deliver a better form guide than RVL. This smacks of an attitude of trying to give punters as little information as possible to work with to decide on their bets, thus losing more money to the TABs. But enough of that, I will cover this disgraceful situation in greater depth in another article.
The first international race for decision is the Hong Kong Sprint over 1200 metres. Three out of the four races for international runners have only a couple of chances. The Sprint only has three, the local favourite Sacred Kingdom, last year’s winner Absolute Champion and Australian superstar Miss Andretti. It is worth noting that every single winner of this event in it’s history has been Australian bred, a remarkable performance for our breeding industry. All of the three main chances this year are also Australian bred.
Sacred Kingdom and Absolute Champion met in the HK Sprint trial with Sacred Kingdom winning by a couple of lengths but I think Absolute Champion can reverse the result. In the trial Absolute Champion had a heap of trouble getting clear in the straight and by the time he did the bird had flown. He also had to give Sacred Kingdom 5 pounds or (2.25 kilos) in weight. Miss Andretti has had no luck with drawing the outside barrier in this event and another factor against her here is that she does not get the full 2.5 kilos advantage she gets in Australia under weight for age conditions. In Hong Kong she only gets 4 pounds or 1.75 kilos in allowance from the males. Against these two Hong Kong stars that .75 kilos may make all the difference between winning and losing. Being Australian I sincerely hope she wins, but as a punter the value may lie with backing Absolute Champion each way.
The HK Vase sees Dylan Thomas from Europe entered. He is equal second on the world racehorse rankings with a rating of 128. That is 6 pounds better than Viva Pataca who will go around at short odds in the HK Cup. He was part of Aidan O’Brien’s nightmare at the Breeder’s Cup meeting in the US in November, being beaten in the Breeders Cup Turf but that race was run on a quagmire.Forgive that run. Back on top of the ground in Honkers , Dylan Thomas gets his chance to show why he is rated so highly.
The Mile is impossible for punters, so I won’t be touching it and the Hong Kong Cup has two chances, Ramonti and Viva Pataca. Vengeance of Rain has a pretty good record but trails 3-1 head to head with Viva Pataca. Perhaps the best thing to do is to take a trifecta with Ramonti and Viva Pataca to fill the first two placings and Vengeance of Rain to grab third. Hopefully Ramonti can roll Viva Pataca to put some value in the dividend.
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