Records weren't broken and the impossible didn't happen, yet Jockey Club chief Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges called the 2011-12 season 'the best ever'.
A touch of scandal was missing, with only Maxime Guyon's whip strike at Keith Yeung Ming-lun mid-straight at Sha Tin offering anything tasty, but the season scored highly in almost every area.
Betting shared the stage with its duller stablemate, infrastructure, as the season opened - the club's threat to take commingling offshore versus the unveiling of the 'Master Plan'.
After years of teasing, the Jockey Club presented the HK$7 billion plan and the upgrading and sexifying of Happy Valley and Sha Tin. Engelbrecht-Bresges cast these improvements and others as 'customer-centric' - experiences tailored to different customer groups - and says the reversal of a downward trend in crowds was no accident.
Among attempts to attract younger audiences to Happy Valley were The Gallery, a remodelled Adrenalin club, with the beer garden continuing to exceed expectations. Live bands took it up a notch again and the youth push extended to the Race Simulator phone app and IBU, a new interactive table-top approach to betting.
The club is not letting the grass grow under its feet. Turnover was up by 7.1 per cent at HK$86.1 billion - 34 per cent in six years - and government duty passed HK$10 billion, but government issues remain. The Jockey Club continues to push for a more equitable sharing of the turnover success and then there is commingling.