Happy Lucky Dragon Win | Men, not machines: give us a break, it's Christmas
The Hong Kong Jockey Club was the Grinch who stole Christmas this year, with an unrelenting two-meeting per week schedule continuing unabated, doing little to dispel the perception that Sports Road has become turnover-obsessed at the expense of participants and punters.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club was the Grinch who stole Christmas this year, with an unrelenting two-meeting per week schedule continuing unabated, doing little to dispel the perception that Sports Road has become turnover-obsessed at the expense of participants and punters.
Just because the calendar allowed for the club’s money-making machine to steamroll through Christmas without missing a beat, doesn’t mean it should have – and perhaps the withdrawal of three jockeys from Sunday’s meeting through illness, along with the slew of suspensions for careless riding that day, were signs there can be a human cost to the giddying betting bankroll.
This isn’t a slot machine – as much as some bean counters might see it – it is a sport relying on fragile animals and perhaps the most under pressure athletes in world sport sitting on them. Even one less meeting during this period would be a welcome reprieve to the pressure cooker, for in Hong Kong it’s not quantity of racing that wears people down – they race more elsewhere obviously – it’s the intensity of competition.
While the Sunday-Wednesday-Sunday monotony rolls on, both horses and humans pay the price, and this season there doesn’t seem much of a gap to come up for breath.
This week at Sha Tin from Sunday to Sunday we get 32 races. With the public holiday meeting on New Year’s Day falling on Wednesday, it means a long day at the office rather than a half day leading into a night meeting. There’s no break after that either, just back to work Sunday and Wednesday.
Andreas Suborics, Colm O’Donoghue and Nicola Pinna all withdrew from riding engagements on Sunday – all complaining of severe dehydration after wasting – losing weight that is, through rudimentary means of sweating and starving.
Suborics was actually admitted to hospital on Christmas night because his chest pains were so bad. And if three couldn’t even get to the track, how many others were “zapped”, having done the hard yards to sweat that extra pound of turkey stuffing away?
