AT LEAST TWICE a week, 46-year-old Tam Ling pulls on his cream jockey breeches and black leather boots, slides his fire-red and pink-starred racing silks over his head and adjusts his goggles under the peak of his cap. He climbs aboard, clasps a whip in one hand and the leather reins in the other. The starting gates fly open. And they're off.
Crouching in the stirrups, he rocks his mount vigorously and beats it soundly with the whip. Behind him, a crowd of 20 or so have gathered, giggling and whispering. 'Sheung, sheung, sheung,' some of them shout. 'Go, go, go.'
As the finish line approaches, he's neck-and-neck with another runner, but Tam's horse grabs it in the final few strides. Tam punches the air and flashes a ubiquitous 'V for victory' sign.
Tam rides three of his 10 mounts to victory on this particular day. In his enthusiasm, he sometimes whips them so hard he damages the hide. 'Don't beat the horses any more, you have damaged them all,' Nelson Tse Jong, senior supervisor of Mongkok's Cyber City video-game arcade, has told him. Tam is one of a number of fans of the electronic horse-racing game, but by wearing his jockey attire at the arcade, he takes his enthusiasm to a higher level than most.
And when he's not wearing his silks and entertaining the regulars at the arcade in Sai Yeung Choi Street, Tam spends every race day at Hong Kong's real tracks, where he has become a well-known fixture in his boots, helmet and goggles and whip. 'I'm not obsessed with it,' Tam says, unconvincingly. 'Going to the racecourse is just my interest. I can communicate with the jockeys. They are sportsmen and I'm just a fan. My relationship with the jockeys is like that of singers and their fans.'
For Tam, what keeps him coming back is simple. 'I was nobody before, now I have some fame,' he says. 'I wanted to make a name for myself. I am very happy now. People used to look down on me; now they care about me.'