The Hong Kong Jockey Club has confirmed the database issue which wiped out hundreds of millions of dollars in turnover and caused major delays at Sha Tin has been fixed ahead of racing at Happy Valley on Wednesday night, but conceded it could not completely rule out the same failure reoccurring on the nine-race card.
Sunday’s meeting at Sha Tin descended into chaos when a technical failure, which affected the HKJC’s commingling system, led to overseas bets being removed from Hong Kong’s pari-mutuel pool.
However, speaking ahead of midweek racing at Happy Valley, the Club’s K L Cheng sought to reassure that immediate action had been taken to fix the issue and mitigate the risk of the failure happening again.
“We have already fixed the database problem, so hopefully the same problem won’t happen tonight or in the future,” Cheng told Idol Horse.
While the Club is confident that racing at Happy Valley will go ahead without any problems, Cheng acknowledged that absolute guarantees are impossible. As a result, he said the HKJC has introduced a new protocol designed to quickly identify issues and limit any disruptions to local pools and payouts.
“In the unlikely event that it does happen again, we have a new set of procedures which will be used from Happy Valley tonight,” Cheng added.
“Number one is that there will be a team of staff deployed to closely monitor the commingling pool and database. If there is anything wrong, they will be able to take action and notify everybody so a timely decision can be made.
“Number two is that we have established a new procedure where we have a checkpoint before a race.
“Once we have reached this checkpoint, which will be about eight to nine minutes before a race, we will decide whether or not we will cancel the commingling pool to make sure the payout for that particular race can be completed by the following race.”
Sunday’s severely delayed dividend results were a clear focal point for the HKJC, and Cheng says that with a checkpoint in place, the process to remove overseas bets from the pool can be completed “in a minute or two”.
Tonight’s meeting at Happy Valley will be the first test of the new system. ∎
