Jockey Club officials are hopeful the loss of a race at Sha Tin on Saturday was a one-off after jockeys’ concerns about visibility led stewards to cancel Race 6 on the all-weather track.
Stewards called the race off after riders complained of heavy kickback in Race 3. Track staff then shifted 1,500 tons of saturated material to the outside of the course. Jockeys led by Zac Purton and including Karis Teetan inspected the surface after Race 8 and agreed to ride in Race 10, which was run without incident.
Three of the 11 races scheduled on the card were on the all-weather track, which is used primarily for training. It hosted about 10 percent of Hong Kong’s races last season and eases pressure on the turf course, which stages the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Raceday next Sunday, November 22, and the LONGINES Hong Kong International Races (HKIR) three weeks later.
Stephen Higgins, the club’s head of raceday operations, tracks and racing facilities, said steady overnight rain did the damage.
“From eight o’clock last night we had 52.5 millimeters until 7am,” Higgins said. “The problem was the consistency of the rain over such a long period of time. It’s not the first time, but it’s a race day and we don’t see those conditions very regularly.”
Higgins said the track was too saturated to grade on Saturday morning.
“It’s saturated, it’s slow and it’s heavy, but it was safe to race,” he said. “The concern from the jockeys was one of visibility. There was a lot of kickback against the rail.”
Purton’s mount Superb Guy finished 12th of 13 in Race 3, beaten 36 lengths. He said visibility was not the only issue.
“The track was soft in parts and firmer in other parts, and horses were slipping a little bit and losing a bit of confidence on it,” Purton said.
“It’s OK in a barrier trial because we can all stay seven or eight wide and go around the outside, stay out of the mud, but when you are in a race you have to ride competitively.”
Staff removed about 15 centimeters of material from the inside 18 meters of the track before the inspection.
“It still wasn’t great, but it was at a point where we were comfortable enough to go around on it,” Purton said. “It had improved a lot from the earlier race.
“The fact that the club listened to what we had to say and tried to fix the problem, then reassess it, was the right thing to do.”
Executive director of racing Andrew Harding said the exchange showed the system working.
“There’s a respectful, candid, free dialogue between the jockeys and racing control,” Harding said. “It works exactly the way it should work.”
The all-weather track is not all-weather in the truest sense, as Polytrack and other synthetic surfaces are. It is an American-style dirt surface. Chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges said the club has examined other surfaces but sees no need for change.
“If you change the track, you know what risk you take,” he said. “We know it’s safe.”
King Dance won Race 10, a Class 3 over 1650m, for Andrea Atzeni and trainer Francis Lui Kin-wai.
Turnover for the meeting, including one simulcast race, reached HK1.394 billion, up six percent despite the lost race. The club paid HK114 million in betting duty to the government and retained HK70 million for operating expenses and charitable contributions.
