New comment on your post “SINGAPORE LA LA LAND”
Author : jeff@lyndhurststud.com
Comment:
Gday Bitch, I read all your stories with great interest, and hope like f..k. I never get a bagging myself !!! I was an exchange student in Johor, Malaysia, 27 years ago, I attended a Malay school and sat up the back of the class with the New Strait Times every day. Coming from the thoroughbred industry I always turned to the racing pages first, and could rarely see or find any racing news, and was always disappointed. On my weekends I took myself across the causeway into Singapore and attended race meeting at the old Bukit Timah course, where I met many contacts that I still have today, in fact I have returned there every year since. As you depict below, the racing coverage in the New Strait Times is dreadful, hasn’t changed in thirty years!
New comment on your post “SINGAPORE LA LA LAND”
Author : Billy J
Comment:
Well said Jeff. As I’ve explained to my good mate Racingb*tch on many occasions, I was an expat living and working in Singapore for 4 years. I was a racehorse owner and was at the STC pretty much every weekend. The opportunity to become a racehorse owner in Singapore only came about because I had mates in the horse racing industry (from Australia) who worked at the STC, along with mates who were bloodstock agents (from Australia) who bought horses from ANZ & sold them in Singapore.
As a proud racehouse owner in the investment banking industry, I frequently invited Expat colleagues and “Locals” to join me in attending the races at the STC. The Expats were always keen without question, however, when extending the invitation to “Locals”, their response was usually: “Whaaaaat? Horseracing in Singapore? Noooo, lah. No horseracing in Singapore, lah. Malaysia.” No kidding. And it happened on many occasions.
My point here is that a large majority of Singaporeans (aside from taxi drivers) don’t even know that that the Singapore Turf Club exists. So what does that tell you about the advertising and marketing of the horseracing industry in Singapore? With the exception of the New Paper and the Shin Min Daily, there is very little coverage of the horse racing in Singapore and the STC does very little to promote it. Even with the influx of expats arriving for the KrisFlyer and the Singapore “International” Cup, no-one in Singapore really seems to take notice, not even Singapore Airlines who sponsors the event.
So yes, Swingawhore is a paradox- always has been, always will.
Well, marketing might not be the right word as, according to some “Hats” spoke to when there for the very successful race day at Kranji on Sunday- and as he points out, they could have just been talking the talk but walking a different walk- there is almost a veil of secrecy or even a complete blackout on information about the sport.
The Straits Times, the city’s biggest newspaper, for example, apparently, had very little coverage on all the great International racing which took place at Kranji Racecourse. We checked. And double-checked. Badminton had better coverage.
The national carrier Singapore Airlines was the major sponsor and there was still such little coverage of an event which many have said was very well managed by the Singapore Turf Club?
Today, at least on the surface, Singapore is very open and inviting to foreign businesses and is the International media centre in the region.
MTV, E! AXN, HBO etc are all there- Singaporean television productions remain shockingly bad and corny- and with expats who found nothing for themselves in Hong Kong, living the Fat Cat life made up of a bungalow, membership to pukka private clubs, domestic helpers and for the men, a wife at home and a Sarong Party Girl on the side.
It’s nice work if you can get it, but also somewhat hypocritical when listening to all the Singapore Pride La La rubbish pumped out by the government media.
Having lived and worked there, Singapore looks to have it all- great bars and restaurants, incredible clubs, shops galore, some of the best food in the world- but underneath this veneer, it lacks that something called soul.
If you have to do business there or even try and order a drink at a 5-star hotel like the Fullerton, anything not going according to script and doesn’t follow the rules, results in a surreal episode of Lost: “But we don’t serve a Club Sandwich here.” “But I can order a Club Sandwich from Room Service, right?” “Yes.” “Okay, here’s my room number so let me order a Club Sandwich from Room Service and have them bring it here.” “Okay la.”
So, amongst this Singaporean buffet of festivals like Gay Nation, joints like Four Floors Of Whores, casinos, football fixer Dan Tan, the well known High Society and its escorts from Perth, is the Singapore Turf Club and racing.
The question is exactly how far will the sport be “allowed” to progress?
The opening of the casinos aimed at gamblers from Mainland China and Indonesia has stumbled, spluttered and embarrassed Singapore with high ranking local officials playing without credit limits- and losing- and unable to pay their debts.
A few months ago, an Oceans 11-type inside job saw one of the casinos again being taken for a ride.
Five years ago, many were ringing the bells of doom for Hong Kong racing and about how Singapore had a more “open approach” to being a horse owner and that the future of racing was in the Lion City.
Today, the abrupt loss of riding licenses for jockeys Stephen Baster and Steven King, Singaporeans- and Malaysians- infiltrating racing in Western Australia in good and not-so-good ways plus a government trying to put the casino genie in the bottle, just might be tying the hands of the Singapore Turf Club.
Let’s hope not. Knowing many who work at the Club and having been there from the early days when legendary ad man Ian Batey ran Batey Ads and listening to his plans for marketing racing in Singapore, the Turf Club needs to find its place and where and how it fits into this very quirky city.
It’s disappointing that the significance of Hong Kong’s wins over the weekend Singapore’s biggest International Races have not been realized outside of the city’s racing world.
Then again, even international racing pundits gave these wins scant mention preferring to focus on their country’s horses and the reasons for their failure.
But that’s how racing has been and how it plods along and wonders why it is still not a “glamor” sport that attracts celebrities, big name sponsors and strong partnerships involving branding.
Until this mindset is changed, until the stupidity of TVN in Oz, for example, that stops fans from uploading videos of their favorite races alleging this to be a breach of contract and so stops the sharing of information just as music companies unsuccessfully tried to stop the sharing of music, racing will always be in the Dark Ages.
It will continue to be a very insular sport for the elitists and the hardcore punter whose universe centers only on racing- the betting side of the sport.
In Hong Kong, the city is going through immense change.
The natives have not only got restless, the lunatics are hell-bent on taking over the asylum and driving out the corrupt politicians, greedy landlords and anyone and everything associated with greed. Gordon Gekko is dead.
In a very fast-paced city like Hong Kong, heroes are always very hard to find as those wearing the black hats and the white hats become very grey. Like actor Jackie Chan who has quickly fallen out of favor.
Unlike many other racing jurisdictions, the HKJC has been able to make racing seen as fun, entertaining and not only about gambling. Want gambling, go to Macau.
It’s a combination of all three USPs plus those Happy Wednesday Nights held in the most unique racecourse in the world.
All this is a very giant baby step towards creating a new “version” of the sport to a new generation of consumers born into a world of online gaming, who have embraced social media and are looking at old things in new ways- and enhancing and changing these to fit THEIR lifestyles.
THEY will lead and they won’t follow leaders and they’ll watch their parking meters.
While TVN in Australia bans the uploading of their racing videos and squirrels them away along with their nuts, the HKJC do all they can to get their videos out, work with social media companies, marketers inside and out of 1 Sports Road, Search Engine Operatives (SEOs) and various new platforms to reach as many different customer segments as possible.
The wins of Military Attack and Lucky Nine last Sunday at Kranji, were more that fodder for the racing pages and where the wife or girlfriend says, ” Here, take your section.”
These wins were the positive fillip Hong Kong people needed to feel a sense of pride, competitiveness and achievement at a time when the city is very splintered regarding what the next steps in its future will be and if there are plans for a Brave New World.
It was a Good News Day just like that wonderful day when the great Silent Witness won in Japan and all of Hong Kong celebrated the victory like a song by Kook And The Gang.
These victories on the weekend should have made the Main News Reports on television.
IF the above was done, it would have been heard about globally- and no one knows who this might have attracted and where this could have led. Now THIS is making something truly go viral.
This is where one can see quite radically different views on the global image and marketing of horse racing surfacing.
The old guard remains set in their ways and happy to watch while Rome burns around them whereas others are pushing the envelope to douse the fires and accelerate Change and bring the sport in line with the times.
We’re still trying to understand and come to grips with the ‘live’ simulcast from Singapore where, judging by the tweets, DMs, emails, phone calls and pigeon droppings received, most Hong Kong audiences managed to watch two races- the International Cup won in devastating manner by the John Moore-trained Military Attack and given a brilliant ride by Zac Purton with the other Hong Kong entry, Dan Excel, running the quinella, and another race that held very little interest and an anti-climax to the two International Cup races.
As an aside, having a race like this follow the Cup race is a bit like a attending a Rock concert and the supporting act coming out to do an encore after the main act has left the stage along with the audience.
The programing is all wrong. In fact, it’s very Duh Duh stupid, Einstein.
Getting back to the ‘live’ simulcast from Singapore, what was promised and reported in the media was that six races would be shown, starting from 5.30pm on ATV.
Nothing more- simply ATV- and which makes us wonder if those even promoting these broadcasts understand how it all works- and know the various ATV channels. We’re betting that they don’t.
So, we switched to ATV World, the English channel, at 5.30 and watched a few minutes of Wolfie Bear or something like that. ATV Home, the station’s Chinese channel was showing what looked like Dragon Ball.
As time went by and much channel surfing plus having to endure Michael Chugani on Newsline screeching at some bloke about whether he is a patriot, came a voice-over announcing that the races from Singapore were on next.
Meanwhile, JoJo and Coxy were professional, informative and very good, but why they were made to be seated inside a Barbie tea party set made their hard work look amateurish.
Like The Thunderbirds Are Go set from where The Trio Los Amigos give us their thoughts via Racing To Win, these sets, possibly designed by a school for the blind, they must go.
The colors- garish, the zig-zag designs, the Barbie sets- take so much away from the content. One’s mind becomes a Rubik’s cube and nothing clicks together.
Hell, there are days when we expect Barney to come out for a knees-up with the Trio Los Amigos and Willy Wonka be seated next to JoJo along with his Ooompah Loompahs.
This can also bring in HKJC blue chip sponsors- and give them added value- and not the tatty commercials for brands of condoms etc shown during the breaks of those ‘live’ broadcasts on ATV Home.
For the HKJC it means total control of its content.
It also means a new revenue generator and, over time, new concepts to also cater to those newcomers to racing who still have no idea how to place a bet- but would like to- but first need to “understand the game” for fear of looking “silly” when amongst the hardcore crowd.
John Moore got that monkey off his back along with his safari suit by winning on foreign soil with one of his runners. And what a win it was, too with Zac Purton launching a brilliant Zac Attack on Military Attack in the Krisflyer International Cup which practically jogged home- not that this was a sit and street job.
This was Zac Purton, a truly world class jockey, in the zone, the best jockey riding in Hong Kong and totally in sync with a brilliant horse.
Where to next for Military Attack? Anywhere really and let’s not forget that John Moore quinella-d the race with the very consistent Dan Excel. That’s the good news.
What isn’t good news is that many in Hong Kong never watched the win of Lucky Nine and the launching of another Zac Attack on Raziyya Sydney for Michael Freedman.
When advertising or reporting that these ‘live’ simulcasts will be shown on ATV, specify which ATV and if it’s this mysterious ATV Digital, tell us where it is. Don’t turn it into Where In The World Is Santiago.
As a terrestrial station, ATV is not exactly a station that attracts a great audience. And to watch its programming on ATV World from 5.30pm as reported and to finally see JoJo McKinnon and Michael Cox appear on screens and tell us what we missed seeing- especially the win of Lucky Nine and Caspar Fownes and Brett Prebble also flying the Hong Kong flag in the Krisflyer International Sprint- is short-changing local racing fans and quite loony.
Days like this don’t happen every day for Hong Kong racing and to miss out on one of its two great successes is sloppy promotion and amateurish communications.
As the Fashion Editor of a leading magazine that deals in all things fashionable and coming from Australia’s first family of racing, she has been her own person.
Have you noticed how the name Kate Waterhouse has not been dragged through all the horseshit of the Singo-Gai horse opera that has now surely run its course in Australia? We have.
Like Francesca Cumani, Kate Waterhouse is or can be leaders of the new generation of racegoers who are changing the sport from a two-bit mugs game to one that is re-shaping it and giving it a sense of class it never had before.
With a global sponsor like Longines, surely both Kate Waterhouse and Francesca Cumani make such obvious racing ambassadors for the brand- along with the fabulous Faye Wong from Beijing.
We looked the photographs below, checked out the styles created by Pharrell Williams and Marc McNairy and we knew the model looked familiar. And then it clicked.’
The moody model is a dead ringer for jockey Zac Purton. Agree? Agree he could look absolutely Zacalicious in this gear?
Should be especially worn when facing the Stewards for refusing to wear daggy silks.
We call her JoJo just as we call Gai Waterhouse Lady GaiGai and no one seems to mind.
Of course, JoJo is extremely well-known to racing fans in Oz where she was with Sky Sports and did a sterling job keeping everyone aware and abreast of news.
Today in Hong Kong, JoJo pops up hosting all simultaneous broadcasts of international races and makes these shows more stimulating.
Professional, knowledgable and almost bubbling over with enthusiasm when describing Gibbo’s charges- and why shouldn’t she get a charge outta them?- we often watch to see the backdrops JoJo is plonked in front of to give these shows more pizazz.
Our favorite to date were the tiny used oil drums used as a prop for JoJo and her co-host during the simultaneous broadcast of the races from Dubai. It looked like Alice’s tea party in Lilliput.
A former DJ when in Oz- she’ll tell you this every time you meet her on the dance floor at Spicy Fingers- and from a racing family, Jenny From The Dock- as in Paddock- is one of our favorite people in racing.
Thoroughly professional, to the point and extremely knowledgable, her paddock parade selections- and running around that paddock looking at the horses, making notes, giving her comments must be one helluva workout- are followed by many as the odds are they’re spot on.
If she’s had a bad day in the paddock, Jen drags hubby David to Spicy Fingers in Wanchai where she cuts loose on the dance floor like, well, Mustang Sally.
David tries to keep up and makes like Tarzan doing the Hully Gully, but it doesn’t really work: She Tarzan, he Jen.
Actually, Darren Flindell, Clint Hutchison and Brett Davis, these are the co-hosts of the show Racing To Win which has been going on for about three decades in Hong Kong and way back to the days of Jim McGrath, Wadey, Parkey and, good gawd, David “I LOVE myself!” Raphael.
These Los Amigos take a more laid-back approach to the show which, apart from some speed maps and random snippets of music, plods along like a Class 5 galloper tired of it all. But what MORE can the Los Amigos DO? Break into song? Break wind?
Despite one idea to dress the trio up like a Barbershop Trio and have them sing their tips, this was quickly snuffed out and we’re back to the yacht club ‘look’ with Brett playing the role of the Harpo, Darren being Groucho and Clint as Chico.
The show has had a bit of a setback since the departure of Tim Clark. The interviews with The Hobbit were much appreciated as he practically screamed out, “IT DOES NOT MATTER WHERE IT IS DRAWN OR IF IT RAINS, I THINK IT WILL WIN.”
We’re now back to, “Yeah, whatever it does tomorrow, it will improve him” and, “Yeah, it should run a big race if everything goes its way.”
There’s a cloud hanging over Tiger Woods’ comeback which would have been unthinkable some years ago. Finding a new girlfriend, showing he’s mended his errant ways, chipping away and recently winning the Players after three years in the bogey man’s wilderness is stuff of fairy tales- but there’s a sting to this particular tale with doubts emerging about the golfer’s integrity and The Incident On The 14th Hole of the Final Round.
After all, here was this great American hero who had battled cancer, had singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow for a girlfriend and was simply being hounded for years about using performance enhancing drugs by those silly, jealous French and his rivals.
For years he was asked if he ever were and for years he denied he denied he had never ever been a drug cheat. We believed him and supported him until the truth slapped us in the face.
Suddenly, all those yellow “Lancelets” we wore with pride to support his charity became dirty.
Sheryl Crow left him- what a story she must be able to tell- and Oprah who once fawned over him was now interviewing an admitted drug cheat who still bent the truth even while sitting there with his pants down.
Meanwhile, in the gentleman’s game of cricket, we have seen how easy it is, especially in the 20/20 game and the One-Dayers, to fix a game and where in the sub-continent one can bet on the outcome of every ball bowled.
So, want a bowler to throw down a no-ball exactly in the fourth ball of the eighth over, easy- and it has been done and the cheats caught.
The big question is how many cheats have NOT been caught- in all sports where wagering brings out the rotten apples- and where and how and will it ever end?
In horse racing, the question of integrity has reared its ugly head many times in the past few weeks and with the Gai Waterhouse-John Singleton circus taking centre stage.
Who made this circus become the comedy of errors that it’s become?The rabid Aussie racing media.
If this weren’t Gai and Singo, household names Down Under, and the other two-bit players in cameo roles, it would have died a death instead of still gasping for air and going on and on until no one really cares and want the whole damn this to just go away.
Again, horse racing is in the front pages around the world for all the wrong reasons and non race-goers are “helping” underline the image of the sport as being a mug’s game.
As for the Gai-Singo sideshow, it will quickly fade away with a few obligatory fines and it will be business as usual with winners for both though the image of horse racing in Australia has been kicked in the nuts and has become a joke- globally.
It’s also business as usual for Lance Armstrong. He has repented to America in front of Oprah and can now get more millions for a book deal and movie Rights for his wretched story.
Tiger Woods will continue to swing and win- unlike Sinatra- big boys Seth Blatter and Bernie Ecclestone will never be caught despite all the charges and talk of bribery hanging over them.
They are way too powerful and with armies of loyalists around the world on their side to protect them from ever being caught at slips.
They are untouchables. And as in any sport or other business that involves big money, even the untouchables have bigger untouchables behind them and so, the corporate financial food chain will not be broken. The rich will continue to get richer.
It’s like Hollywood and the sexual preferences of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and, say many, Will Smith.
Some of us have seen Cruise’s two marriage Lists and who were on them. But there is big money behind Tom Cruise,action star, and though the truth might be out there, it has always been snuffed out. It can never be outed as it would be bad for business.
Looking at all of this and the names mentioned, in comparison, the Gai-Singo horse opera is like one of those old Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn romps- a lovers tiff between two rather dramatic people that should never have received the publicity it has as the plot was so damn razor thin in the first place.
This kinda drivel passed off as “breaking news”- it’s more like breaking wind- should be saved for TMZ and their exclusives on Lindsay, Miley, Britney and Singo’s mate Tara Reid.
Apart from the doping of the winner of the Tamworth Cup, the speed and quietness in which allegations of race fixing in WA was “solved” by Richard Burt and his executive committee is farcical.
We’re betting this won’t end here and might actually go from “Eastsiders” all the way to Singapore and Malaysia.
It’s a shifty world, one which Mr Burt should know all about from his previous gig. Credit where credit’s due, right?
And so, now what? Storm Le Bastille? Blow the lid off it all? What LID?
If there IS a lid to blow off this surreal version of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner With Gai and Singo, isn’t this the job of the Stewards and Peter V’Landy’s and John Messara? But will they? Of course not.
Why kill the golden goose who, like the “non-punting stable” of Chris Waller are good for business.
What’s in it for you or me? Some disjointed, half-baked moralistic crusade to be like Don Quixote on drugs and fighting half-arsed windmills?
For once, Bowie is wrong- at least when it comes to trying to right the wrongs of the racing industry: There’s no point trying to be a hero for even just one day.
Horse racing- and where there is as much racing as in some countries- is wide open to all kinds of rorts and with even some in racing clubs involved and “rorten” to the core.
Horses being pulled, horse getting off to bad starts, jockeys taking inside runs where there are none, texts sent to those behind the barriers when a big bet has been made, online bookmaker warfare, hacking into accounts etc etc, the list is endless and the solutions to rid these poxes from the sport is wishful thinking and the result of playing with the pixies for too long.
As passionate racing people, what we CAN do is enjoy the ride as much as we can, never fight other people’s battles and do what we can to bring about positive change to the sport by working with the handful of people who see The Big Picture and leave the penny ante shit to the usual suspects who cannot see because of tunnel vision.
That’s the past. The future is not behind you except for learning lessons and never repeating them or having them repeated.
For years, we have brought up the similarities between the music and racing industries- the ominous similarities as we all know that the music industry has gone down the crapper through arrogance and refusing to see that the natives aka as music fans were not just getting restless, these lunatics had taken over the asylum and more than one had flown over the cuckoo’s nest.
What went wrong? Especially when technology took over, most music companies focused on new hires- many times, wrong hires from the digital world who were allowed to sit there for years, keep their heads down, produce nothing and yet, were not just kept on, but were actually promoted for their incompetence.
Racing clubs and music companies both suffer from this disease of often terrible hires, an old boys network notorious for feathering their own nests at the top of the heap and an inability to be in sync with today’s new generation of consumers.
Both try to embrace social media today because everyone else does despite knowing all their “social media” efforts have all the impact of a flea trying to have sex with an elephant.
Social media and the effective use of it has to do with being a good marketing person. With no understanding of traditional Marketing 101, and social media is just twittering in an SEO flap and pissing in the dark.
The music industry has, of course, gone through its share of whistleblowers who huffed and puffed and brought the house down on payola paid to disc-jockeys to play certain records.
They also put an end to CD manufacturing plants secretly financed by music executives when music cassettes were about to be eased out as new hardware was introduced, revealed under the table money made by television executives plus fake and rigged awards and talent shows and the exorbitant spending on useless meetings held at 5-star hotels, plus flooding cheaply manufactured records from places like Malaysia into Europe to make up their numbers.
All this helped- to an extent- clean up -and scare an industry that needed cleaning up- and executives needing to be held responsible for their P&L, quarterly sales results and lavish spending.
Just ask Guy Hands, the private equity buffoon who went from refurbishing toilets on the Autobahn to purchasing EMI Music- and going bankrupt in the process.
Having said this, the industry has also had its share of trouble-making whistleblowers with only empty air accusations, various axes to grind and busy being annoying just out to waste everyone’s time with no proof in their souped up jealous puddings.
As someone far smarter than us always says, jealousy is something that needs to be earned.
The latest racing jurisdiction to be hit by a whistleblower is Western Australia – an anonymous whistleblower, but aren’t they all?- and where five jockeys have been accused of alleged race fixing and working in cahoots with a betting syndicate made up of “Eastsiders.”
Listening to Richard Burt, Chief Executive of RWWA, being interviewed on Perth’s Racing Radio’s The Big Breakfast, he wasn’t a happy camper- and why should he be?
After all, now begins all the work in the name of Integrity to see if there’s fire where there’s smoke or if this is another wild goose chase strictly for the birds.
However, in his position, Richard Burt, who appears to handle himself very well, knows there is a need to err on the side of caution as the integrity of racing in WA is at stake.
Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise as Burt has an opportunity to clean house once and for all as WA racing has been dogged by dark shadows stretching to Singapore and Malaysia for way too long.
With everything else that has unraveled over the past few weeks in the UK and Oz and played out in public like that Don Henley song about Dirty Laundry- and everything that has not made the news- racing, in general, needs this latest controversy like a hole in the head- but WA racing, especially, needs to tackle this problem head on.
The irritating point is jumping at shadows and following up on Chinese Whispers means needing to go running after every piece of gossip or innuendo thrown one’s way.
Perhaps, this is where common sense must prevail and where some things need to be thought about twice to ensure it doesn’t result in any time wasting knee-jerk reactions and protracted investigations.
Either that, or put two and two together, crack email URLs, name these ankle biters, drag them in and get it over with quickly- one way or another.
No one needs a Lance Armstrong cloud hanging about like a bad smell that refuses to go away.
Again, the music industry learnt about time wasting the hard way when lawyers took over music companies and Sue The Bastards became the only solution for way too many years to new media “enemies” like Napster.
Napster could have been the industry’s greatest ally, but blinkered thinking and old-fashioned arrogance took over instead of thinking things through and re-reading The Art Of War.
Today, the online music world is grey and no matter what highly-paid entertainment lawyers might say, there are no laws and it’s all about commonsense coming into play- and calling those corporate bluffs.
Threats, veiled or not, are challenged today by music fans and artists. They know that the genie popped outta the bottle almost ten years ago and legal u-turns are long gone. It’s all become a mess as commonsense did not prevail.
The racing industry can learn from all this and re-look at laws and rules such as jockeys not being able to bet- but their families can.
Puhleese, folks, does this make sense in 2013 and does anyone with a brain believe that this rule is not broken wherever there is a race?
Perhaps- just perhaps- changing or “massaging” an old rule in racing like this just might help the image of racing from a long-term point of view and rid the sport of a problem that keeps popping up like a zit.
Sure he has his detractors who fob him off as a “good manager and not a “visionary”, but the incredible outpouring of disappointment at the news of Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement as the Manager of Manchester United- and the Man U brand- at the end of July goes beyond the world of football and football fans.
It shows how the world- sporting and non-sporting- respects men with character- men with huge balls who stand up for their beliefs and always support team players perhaps even in spite of themselves.
It’s to do with going with gut instincts and realizing that no one is perfect.
It’s like the respect we have for the very few leaders of racing clubs- one?- who is leading the racing world out of the twentieth century.
This is by realizing that the hardcore punter is an endangered species with the need for new ways to entice those standing on the sidelines, watching and wondering if they should jump in with both feet and commit to the sport like their parents, aunts and uncles have done- or if there are better ways of spending their time investing in the new buffet table of opportunities placed before them.
Especially in Asia, these are VERY cash-rich men and women in their Thirties and Forties who always want added value for their business investments- and, to them, horse racing is a hobby and an investment.
Even when attracted and committed to horse racing, they need to be constantly pampered through new venues, ease in betting facilities and being around and inter-acting with those who share their interests.
Watching a race for a few minutes every half hour is not enough for this Milenia Generation that needs to have something to interest them every nanu second.
Serve them the same dish all the time and you’ll be lucky to see them twice a year and which is why the marriage of racing clubs and sponsors must never be taken for granted. Sponsors stray if they feel they’re not getting enough bangs for their buck.
Apart from working with sponsors, mentoring his young players and being there to build up the Man U brand, Sir Alex is an extremely staunch horse racing fan who has had long friendships with the likes of the late, great horse trainer Ivan Allen, the legendary Lester Piggott and Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, CEO of the HKJC.
The friendship between Ivan Allan and Sir Alex must have been a fascinating one. Both were and are men’s men who wouldn’t suffer fool’s gladly and, yes, they could be described as bullies. But when armed with the courage of one’s convictions, there is a time and place for “bullies” who know they are being stopped from soaring with the eagles by being surrounded by turkeys.
Just as Sir Alex could see a football player who had potential that was yet to be realized- someone who would one day learn to Bend It Like Beckham- Ivan Allen could see raw talent in a jockey- and support it- even one as mercurial and difficult as the ever-so-gifted Eric Saint Martin who could have been anything but was bogged down with a huge chip on his shoulder.
And though Eric The Terrible would shrug his shoulders and walk away from other trainers with a mumble of merdes, he always stopped and listened to Mr Allen. We all did. He commanded respect.
In any sport, in any industry, leaders might not win any popularity stakes or go out of their ways to be liked, but they are respected for their results in this results-driven world.
Ivan Allen and Sir Alex Ferguson always delivered. They were respected even by their enemies, they are and will be missed, but they have inspired many.
Those in the racing world who knew both men have learnt much being in their company- the pressures that come with the territory, whom to trust, when to dig one’s heels in with zero tolerance and in the case of Sir Alex, building a brand as global as Man U.
When local trainer Peter Ng retires at the end of this season, Hong Kong will lose one of the real gentlemen of the turf who has always gone about his business in a truly professional manner.
Ironically, this, his last as a trainer as he has reached the compulsory retirement age, has been one of his best in many years and even gaining new runners to his stable.
Perhaps it’s suddenly dawned on many everything Peter Ng achieved with champion galloper Quicken Away, a regular ride for the very good New Zealand jockey Nigel Tiley.
Today, the HKJC is said to be raising the bar when it comes to granting trainers licenses.
This is to be applauded when one thinks of bona fide trainers like John Size, Richard Gibson, John Moore, Tony Cruz, Caspar Fownes, Dennis Yip, Tony Millard and the rest.
Sure, there have been the hard luck stories that have affected some trainers, but life is not fair.
It’s the luck of the draw and, bluntly put, there are those with trainers licenses who might be lovely people with whom to have a Tsingtao, but who are battlers clinging to their gigs and when they do train a winner, punters go through a brain freeze.
We have no idea where all this might lead, but we just want Peter Ng remembered for his great service to Hong Kong racing and his mighty successes with the great Quicken Away.
@BeckyBlack20 @tommyberry21 To
knows me as Mad Dog. Heard me give a weird speech in Sydney at a mate's birthday. Not seen him since. Safe:)! 3 hours ago
