Hong Kong to Simulcast the Met

In a historic move, Phumelela Gaming & Leisure have announced that the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) will be simulcasting South African racing for the first time.

JANUARY 12, 2018
The meeting they will be taking is run at Kenilworth on 27 January and includes the R5-million Sun Met. Hong Kong will be taking Races 5 to 10.

“This is a major achievement for South African racing,” said International Executive Director John Stuart. “The Hong Kong Jockey Club look to simulcast only the major meetings from around the world so one can see how highly they rate South African racing and specifically an event such as the Sun Met.”

In addition, the HKJC have confirmed two of their journalists will be coming over to cover the build-up to the race meeting. Tellytrack will be creating a special production for them in which one the presenters will include former jockey Basil Marcus, who is well known in Hong Kong. Marcus is a seven-time champion jockey who settled back in Cape Town after the curtain came down on his riding career.

Good stuff could do with something positive for racing.

Its been a bit doom and gloom lately

Good news. Just hope for minimal starting stall issues and falling off shoe delays ,which is something I don't notice a lot of in HK races.

Hopefully local punters can beat the HK punters. Turnovers may well climb, but that doesn't mean punters do better. Lets hope we transferring the cash this way.

Vee, please tell us how we did last year as punters vs those plugged into our pools. Did we win?

Yes just spot on. Positive move beneficial to SA racing. I have realised most horses who are currently in training in Hong Kong impressed at Kenilworth. I read a certain blog last yr about how Kenilworth horses easily adapt to Hong Kong tracks.

drdom wrote: Good news. Just hope for minimal starting stall issues and falling off shoe delays ,which is something I don't notice a lot of in HK races.

Your'e so right! I've seen our 'big' races regularly jump up to 15 minutes late after all the 'meeting & greeting' that goes on before the race. To say nothing of the amble down to the start & the seemingly endless circling behind the stalls.

Was told Hong Kong Jockey Club boycotted Magic Millions yearling sale in Gold Coast due to stricter quarantine changes by Aussie govt. They were budgeting close to HK$40m on yearlings. Read certain article this morning (part of extract below) and knocked sense why HKJC is to simulcast Sunmet and might open doors for more SA races to be simulcast as the Jockey Club is also planning on shunning away Aussie simulcast totally which was benefiting local racecourses. Opportunity for SA racing to get organised.

Part of the article below

Fans might remember that J J The Jet Plane’s 2010 Hong Kong
Sprint victory had been prefaced by a long journey to Sha Tin via
quarantine at home in South Africa, then in Mauritius and then more
quarantine in Great Britain.
Direct exports would do away with that long, arduous process and we
would certainly see a lot more South African horses here for
international events and quite a lot more bought to race as well.
The Jockey Club says it at least partly funded the research that led to
this vital discovery, and which could lead to a boost for the South
African horse industry over the Australian industry. The new
quarantine kerfuffle could assist that, too.
This season, some 48 per cent of the 507 starters have been
Australian-breds. A random pluck of a couple of meetings from last
season showed about 41 per cent of the individual runners at those
meetings were Australian-breds.

Make no mistake, Australian-bred horses make up a large proportion
of the racing stock at Sha Tin.
But they are not cheap – definitely not as cheap as South African
horses, which are also of high quality and suitability for Hong Kong
and include bloodlines that were bought in Australia and imported for
breeding.
Through all of last season, there were only a handful of South
African-bred runners (totalling just 67 runs between them), most
trained by Tony Millard, who has championed his country’s breed as
being the equal of other jurisdictions. He lets you know every time
one of them wins.
The difficulties with AHS and the long process for export have been
the reasons there are so few South African horses here – the reality
is that an owner doesn’t want to buy his horse then wait at least a
year while it tours the world before he can see it run.

If it becomes possible to import directly from South Africa to Hong
Kong, in the same way as it is with horses from Australia or New
Zealand but at a lesser price, they will become very popular, very fast
and quarantine issues with Australia will push more owners in that
direction.
Every time a horse is imported to race here, part of the contract
between the owner and the Jockey Club is a payment up front to
repatriate the horse when it is retired.
Adding a six-month quarantine in New Zealand and additional air
transport to the bill will make it more expensive, or maybe it looks
like hard work if it is decided to find somewhere else to retire the
horse.

FULL ARTICLE LINK
scmp.com/sport/racing/article/2111803/sh...own-hong-kong-racing