At a time when Hong Kong needs champions, one can’t help wondering why instead of continuing in a piece meal fashion with bibs and bobs of chubby red balloons, giant coloured eggshells, welcoming princes and sheiks, and at the same time celebrating bona fide winners winners like fencer Edgar Cheng, world champion swimmer Siobhan Haughey and long jumper Tiffany Yue, why, we as community, can’t have a Hong Kong Champions Weekend- or month?
Maybe even a year of singing “We Are The Champions”?
For instance, at Shatin on Sunday, there will be the FWD sponsored Champions Day with three Group 1 races that bring together champion gallopers led by the mighty Golden Sixty, along with competition from Japan and Europe and some of the world’s best riders.
Though understanding the reticence of some not to make a song and dance about a gambling driven event featuring horses, having this FWD Champions Day be part of a holistic Hong Kong Champions Day could surely create something bigger and better and more newsworthy than “going rogue” by continuing with a very splintered attempt at creating Hong Kong pride?
By the way, in Australia, popular racing analyst David Gately, below, always refers to equine stars as athletes.
Though possibly a small thing, this description elevates the status of the animal and an event like FWD Champions Day to a new level of awareness and quality.
Of course, those riders and trainers who guide these athletes are also champions in their chosen careers , but, at least for me, watching equine athletes is a rich and exciting combination of speed, determination and beauty.
The focus is on the horse and the horse makes this their day.
The inclusion of this event together with the celebration of every other Hong Kong champion in all areas- technology, culinary accomplishments, climate change, art- underlines the diversity of Hong Kong and an event with mainstream media interest.
The rather tinpot and amateurish way of marketing Hong Kong has gone on for way too long with extremely poor results no matter what the highly paid leaders say.
No one believes them because it’s all a mixed up and upside down fruit cake of random ideas.
Here’s a city with a seemingly terminal defeatist attitude at a time when the world should be seeing a vibrant Hong Kong coming together and being full of winners.
No one wants to see a childish group of one dimensional dim sums and whining ninnies happily drinking from their half empty glasses and waiting for the next person to fix self-made problems.
As the song says, Every 1’s a winner, baby.
We just need to believe it- with some Hot Chocolate.
