In order to host this event, which Beijing cannot hold because of the serious threat to the health of participating horses, Hong Kong will deliberately set about diminishing the training faculties for its own athletes hoping to compete in the games. And in return for the alleged generosity of the Jockey Club in footing the bill to host this event, the training infrastructure for our best athletes will be permanently reduced in order to promote horse racing, a sport more associated with gambling than anything resembling Olympic ideals.

Yet this decision has been hailed as ``a milestone in Hong Kong's sports history'' by Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho.

This milestone entails the closure of the Sports Institute, the premier training arena for Hong Kong's athletes and the almost certain permanent grant of 40,000 square meters of institute land to the Jockey Club for the development of horse racing facilities which should then enable the club to extend the racing season.

By paying up to HK$800 million for adapting the venue for the equestrian events the Jockey Club is effectively acquiring the land at a knockdown price of about HK$1,860 per square foot.

It is ludicrous to claim that the hosting of this elitist sporting event will somehow promote our sporting spirit and stimulate participation in sports which is at a lamentably low level.

There have even been suggestions that there will be a surge in equestrian sports participation as a result of this decision. How on Earth 99.9 per cent of Hong Kong's population could even contemplate having the funds to take part in this sport is not known.

Yet we are assured that the athletes who will be shuffled off to inferior facilities in Wu Kwai Sha will not have their training interrupted or impaired. The athletes concerned take a very different view and now face another obstacle to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

If all of this isn't sufficient to insult people's intelligence, the government is suggesting the event could attract up to 32, 000 visitors. This number appears to be based on stadium capacity for equestrian events at the Athens Olympics in 2004 but reports at the time said that during some of these contests volunteers appeared to outnumber spectators. So the challenging assumption seems to be made that not only will Hong Kong attract capacity crowds but that the entire stadium for the equestrian events will be filled by tourists.

And, of course, the equestrian events in Athens were held alongside other Olympic events in the same city. In Hong Kong spectators will have to travel from Beijing to watch what is a minority event.

Yet none of this has been mentioned in the quite inexplicable euphoria which greeted the announcement of the International Olympic Committee's decision to move the equestrian events to Hong Kong. Instead government leaders have been preening themselves to be photographed in the company of IOC president Jacques Rogge. Timothy Fok, who is both the president of the Hong Kong Olympic committee and allegedly represents the sports sector in Legco, has been beside himself in self-congratulation on having lured a speck of the Beijing games down to Hong Kong.

Not only is Fok a notable laggard in representing his constituency in Legco, but he appears to have forgotten that the local sports scene stretches a great deal further than the world of horses.

And in the world of horses, the interests of the rich and powerful are very much to the fore in the Jockey Club, a powerful body run by some of Hong Kong's most influential people. It would be interesting to find out what they know or care about sport as it is played in cramped school playgrounds, scrappy municipal sports fields and in government swimming pools replete with undesirable worms.

The real boost to Hong Kong's sport came from none of these people but from the SAR's wonderful Paralympics team that covered itself in glory in Athens, only to achieve modest recognition back home. And perhaps an even bigger boost came from the modest and brilliant local Olympian Lee Lai-shan who won gold at the Atlanta Olympics after triumphing in the windsurfing event.

Lee, from a modest background, is a genuine local hero. The same cannot be said for the imported silver medalists Hong Kong enrolled to compete in the last Olympics.

The people who run the upper echelons of sport in Hong Kong no doubt think it is clever to win medals in this way, but now we know more about their commitment to the nurturing of local talent, something that takes second place to vain glory.

vines@netvigator.com

Stephen Vines is a journalist and entrepreneur