This is about promises made and not kept, it’s about standing up for the rights of the little guy. It’s about standing your ground against those in power and the right to have our voices heard, especially when the evil empire wants us suppressed. The protests won’t stop until we see change. There is a class divide that needs to be addressed.
“Oh great, here we go again,” I hear you moan. “It’s another “Occupy Hong Kong” op-ed from some idealistic lefty pinko. And an expat mind you! A gweilo with no skin in the game, telling us how our little country should be run.”
Whoa there, hold off with the neo-conservative diatribe, or pro-China trolling, this is a racing column – not the real world – and we want to talk about Hong Kong racing’s class divide. There will be no tear gas at the track, yet. Not until the next beaten favourite anyway.
A column on Occupy could be semi-warranted – the protests have affected the Jockey Club. A rare “turnover down” day on National Day was blamed on the so-called civil disobedience (although it probably had more to do with the all-weather track), and three betting shops have remained closed for around three weeks amid the unrest.
But even the most extreme Occupier wouldn’t dare get between a cranky punter and the public stands on raceday. That would be a public relations disaster for the movement and an extreme threat to personal safety that not even an umbrella could stop. The stinging verbal wrath of a Hong Kong punter scorned makes pepper spray seem like orange juice in comparison.
But if Hong Kong racing did take to the streets, who would be the most likely group of jockeys, trainers, officials or members of the public to don swimming goggles and cling wrap in pursuit of “racetrack democracy”?
Happy Lucky Dragon Win rates the seriousness of each fabricated revolution.
TRAINERS AT THE OLYMPIC STABLES v HKJC
"Trainers from the so-called “Olympic stables” – Sean Woods, David Ferraris, Michael Chang Chun-wai and Andreas Schutz – want a swimming pool they were promised more than five years ago and have barricaded themselves in the jockeys’ weighing room until key demands are met. Racetrack manager John Ridley says Kim Kelly’s riot squad will be sent in to quell any more unrest and the four trainers must return to their stables immediately."
This is for real – ok, not the unluckiest quartet of Hong Kong trainers this side of Beijing being locked in a room together awaiting a baton-wielding chief steward – but the pool situation. We don’t mean a recreational pool where Woods and Ferraris can play Marco Polo, Schutz can work on his diving technique and Chang can look on, resting on a deck chair while working on his tan as he puffs on his trademark stogie – although that is easy, and very disturbing, to imagine.
What the “Pool Party” group want is an equine exercise pool – just like the one used by trainers over at the older stables. They also want a tunnel to access the training track from their facilities so their horses don’t have to run a half marathon before they get on the training track each morning. Seems fair enough.
YELLOW RIBBON RATING: Four out of five. The Olympic stables might be world class, but the trainers are left without an option during the off-season when the training tracks are closed and they are denied access to the pool, which maintains residual fitness.
LOCAL JOCKEYS v JOAO MOREIRA
"Local jockeys have formed a picket line around Moreira’s Sha Tin apartment demanding an end to his ruthless year-long dictatorship of the riding ranks. On the first anniversary of Moreira’s current, brutal tenure (October 20), student leader Dicky Lui Cheuk-yin says the Brazilian has made his colleagues’ lives miserable.
“Not only is Joao better than us, he is lighter than us, too,” Lui said. “At least when Douglas [Whyte] pinched our rides, he had to starve himself for two days to do it.”
Conspiracy theorists claim the Lui-led group – “Apprentices against Moreira” – is actually joint-funded by rival militant leaders Whyte and Zac Purton, who just want things back to the way they used to be pre-October 2013."
This wouldn’t be that far-fetched if Moreira wasn’t so damn nice. Seriously, can the bloke just have a bad day or is he just happy all of the time? He seems to be smiling constantly, and even helps the young local riders out – in between stealing their rides and winning around three races per meeting.
YELLOW RIBBON RATING: Zero out of five. The smiling assassin Moreira is that good, and yeah, he is stealing your lunch money kiddies, but you’ll just have to suck it up.
PUNTERS v SHA TIN STRAIGHT TRACK
"A group of disgruntled punters have chained themselves to the three outside starting gates at Sha Tin after a “well-drawn” outsider destroyed their chances of winning a double trio.
“We are doing the form backwards,” said one angry bettor. “You look at the barrier draw first, and the horses drawn near the grandstand rail. But now everyone is on to it and the jockeys are just racing to be first to the fence. The world has gone topsy-turvy. A normal bias would be fine. Some of my friends have even said they’d rather bet on the all-weather track.”"
This issue is a very real one for the club – the outside of the straight track is a fast lane, and it might be getting worse, but the moment ground staff start tinkering with tracks, well, that’s when things start getting really bad. Looks like a no-win situation, and a racetrack occupation could be imminent next time St Yazin runs a race at odds.
YELLOW RIBBON RATING: Three out of five. The straight-track bias needs to be addressed, racing on the straight course has become a joke, but it has to be done carefully.
