It IS still The HONG KONG Jockey Club, right?

Hans Ebert
Oct 2
5 min read

If still going to the races regularly in Hong Kong as my friends and I once did, and was at Shatin for the National Day races yesterday, I would have screamed out to everyone within earshot, “I TOLD YOU SO!!!”

I would have been referring to jockey Hong Kong born jockey Jerry Chau winning the eighth race on the fairly average galloper Healthy Happy at odds of 22 to 1.

Those who know me well would understand how much time I have for this rider and follow him on the few rides that come his way.

Why such few rides?

Ask those who one thinks should know, and all you get is almost a vow of silence.

Races seven, eight, nine and ten yesterday were four of the most exciting horse races I have seen anywhere in the past ten years.

Jerry Chau was bang in the middle of two of them with him having to dig deep into his inner resolve and fight off the brilliance of Andrea Atzeni- but just lost out to an inspired ride from The Man From Sardinia.

This is the calibre and quality plus the excitement and competitiveness that even a home audience not into horse racing would stand up and cheer.

The brilliance of Zac Purton saw the champion jockey put on another riding clinic and is something we have come to expect.

Riding another brace of winners yesterday saw him raising the bar even higher.

For myself, and being an adman who learned much about how the creative process and creative product, Zac and this raising of the bar could be used so effectively to inspire those not the least bit interested in horse racing and needing to be inspired through the effective use of PSAs- Public Service Announcements.

It’s something I have mentioned many many times to the German CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

And?

Aside from The Tao of Zac, I have been watching Jerry Chau from the time when he arrived in Hong Kong as a pinch hitter for another apprentice- Gary Lo- and was happy to see him indentured to the stable of Douglas Whyte.

If a young jockey and needing to learn about every blade of grass at the racecourses in Hong Kong, you couldn’t find a better mentor than one of the world’s champion riders.

The sorcerer and apprentice combination of Whyte and Chau clicked and the team was consistently amongst the winners until something apparently went wrong and the combination fell apart.

Jerry Chau very quickly became Yesterday’s Man. He was dogged by suspensions for careless riding and found it hard to get rides. He gradually started doing more and more riding for the now retired trainer Benno TP Yung and they built up an admirable number of winners from the limited number of runners that the stable had.

This season, apart from winning some pretty forgettable dirt race in Korea, Jerry Chau is making the most of every single ride that comes his way, and only a bloody fool would leave him out of exotic bets like quartets, doubles and quinellas.

He keeps popping up and always at very healthy odds.

At a time when the government is getting behind successful Hong Kong born Chinese sporting heroes, here is someone with his own unofficial fan club who has one of best strike rates of any of the local riders.

He might even be able to have horse racing finally accepted as a sport and not a “gambling pastime”.

But who at the HKJC is capable of understanding and doing this amongst its many hires?

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but, then again, why the hell not and just tell it like it is?

As someone who doesn’t believe that the full tilt boogie woogie of hours of horse racing and random bibs and bobs of what’s passed off as on-course “entertainment” can ever work in its current incarnation, why doesn’t Kaiser Wilhelm and his Oompah Loompahs work on improving the racing product by starting with the little things?

Nah, not the set pieces of bloated waffling about numbers, possible horse racing in China and unveiling more billion dollar chocolates for budget tour groups from Shenzhen to a subservient racing media looking after their pension plans, but those pressers often look like a Far Side cartoon featuring primitive man mixing with aliens.

No, I’m talking about the little things like doing away with the same old- and now ten years older- camera angles of The Little Rascals wobbling slowly towards the stage area and taking up their usual positions for the obligatory Cup presentations.

There’s something almost of Trumpian proportions about this superficial pomp and with little to no circumstance.

Who watches this rubbish, anyway?

Those at home have probably switched channels or are having a quickie instead of being glued to television and, er, the “raucous fun” of a motley crew of old folks onstage being directed by the usual ladies in pale stockings who look like Pan American stewardesses.

For all the talk of revolution and evolution and the importance of storytelling, what is up there is what was up there over ten years ago.

It’s all kinda creaky and creepy and as familiar as those IBU betting tables that once were at the venue Adrenaline at Happy Valley racecourse and mysteriously disappeared like something out of a B grade sci-fi movie.

All these are just another big and useless brick in the wall of horse racing and the HKJC which is not exactly a dai pai dong stall.

It’s another gooey serving of sago pudding with more eyeliner than JD Vance.

To say that those running horse racing in Hong Kong and paid millions for basically being asleep at the wheel with quite a few enjoying the expat lifestyle and low taxes before leaving with their bounty, need a swift kick up their backsides and shown the door.

As a longtime Hong Kong Belonger, what I see at the Club are a privileged few, especially from the land of Oz like the former Racing Victoria Chief Steward in the rather controversial Terry “Drive By” Bailey.

In charge of the licensing of trainers and jockeys, old “Bails”, who I saw fairly recently at the Champagne Bar having a gay old time with a lady friend and continuing to live off the fat of the Hongkers land, keeps his head down and apparently does what he’s told.

Isn’t this how to survive at what some refer to as the “evil empire”?

Hmmmmm, wonder why?

There are a few good people at the HKJC though there’s plenty of opportunistic lard wobbling around pretending to be who they’re not, and totally out of sync with the times.

It’s interesting what smoke and mirrors and research figures can hide and when one sees themselves as a legend in their own lunchtime.

But, children, some cracks in the HKJC makeup are starting to show, much like Cher melting on a hot summer afternoon at Shatin.

It’s not a good ‘look’.