Pop star Edan Lui entertained young fans around the parade ring and busloads of mainland Chinese tourists bolstered a big crowd for the 2024/25 season opener at Sha Tin but horse racing’s greatest attraction always ends up being the horse and one of Hong Kong’s rising stars confirmed himself as a new hero on Sunday.
For all of the campaigns concocted to attract new demographics and save horse racing from dying of old age – pop star promotions or technology-laden sections aimed at generation X, Y, Z and anybody else – Ka Ying Rising’s win on Sunday at Sha Tin is the type of memorable moment that creates new fans.
When Ka Ying Rising kicked clear of a quality Class 1 field on Sunday carrying top weight of 135-pounds, star jockey Zac Purton finding time to admire his style on the big screen, it was a spectacular reminder of what separates the sport from the cold blooded talk of betting turnover that can dominate discussions at events like the recent Asian Racing Conference.
“He’s a bit special, isn’t he?” trainer David Hayes said after last season’s champion Griffin showed tactical speed to lead, then sustained power throughout to tear through 1200m in 1.08.03s. Ka Ying Rising is now on a path to the Hong Kong Sprint.
In terms of look and feel, the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s promotion of Sunday’s season opener seemed a lot like the highly successful Japan Racing Association (JRA) promotions that have helped turn its racecourses into more inviting places for younger fans and females.
HKJC CEO Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges is particularly taken by the way the JRA has placed the horse as central to its marketing.
“I admire how Japan has created a fan base that is based on the love of the horse and the sport,” he told Idol Horse after the last race, and after Edan Lui’s parade ring performance, at Sha Tin. “If people have a propensity for gaming then they will wager, but you need to create an attraction which is first based on horses and the competition.
“If you are at the track, the beauty of horses, the dynamics of horses, this stimulates your senses, we need to convey this. This is what we will focus on.”
On those cold-blooded turnover questions, the Jockey Club faces some new challenges this season. The key economic indicators – stock market and property in particular – paint a worrying picture, but Engelbrecht-Bresges was pleased with the “resilience” shown in turnover of HK$1,327.6 million, up 8.6% on last year’s season opener.
One of the drivers for that turnover boost was the encouraging growth of Hong Kong’s horse population to nearly 1,200 and especially horses ready to race – club sources putting that figure at 830, up from 740 at the same stage last season – resulting in healthier field sizes for the season opener. Last year’s first meeting had just 97 horses run across 10 races, this year there were 119.
The crowd of 43,000 – the largest on day one since 2019 and more than 7,000 of those fans were from Mainland China, 5,000 of them as part of official China Travel Corporation tours.
Then there were the intrepid Cantopop fans, cramming into the Sha Tin parade ring for the much-hyped show from Lui, from the adored Hong Kong boy band Mirror.
The Sha Tin Racecourse parade ring is usually home to some of the most unruly racing fans in the world. These are the fans who viciously booed Joao Moreira when the emerging champion Rapper Dragon had just collapsed beneath him with an ultimately fatal injury in 2017. They also booed Hong Kong’s most popular jockey of the time, ‘KK” Chiong for not much reason at all – maybe just for sport – and legend Douglas Whyte too, as his riding career came to a close.
It isn’t necessarily personal, it’s just part of a day at the track. The only time there is direct conflict among fans at Sha Tin is arguments over seats, which are ‘reserved’ on a first-come, first-serve basis by the time-honoured method of draping a broadsheet newspaper over the top of it.
To avoid conflict on Sunday, the ‘non-core racing fans’, i.e. Mirror fans, were given a section to themselves in an area less popular with the hardcore fans.
There couldn’t be a more strident sign that times might be changing than the sight of the young fans filling the seats after the last race. The hope is that at least a few of them were there early and saw Ka Ying Rising and will be back again for the Hong Kong International Races, regardless of whether or not a pop star is present.
