Late scratching costs Club
The big story of yesterday's Group One Stewards Cup at Sha Tin lay not with the winner but with the late scratching of hot favourite Perfect Partner ($22), who did a lap of the track without the presence of Felix Coetzee before stewards ruled a line through his name.
In an era when Hong Kong racing has been struggling to maintain turnover, the scratching of a short-priced favourite for a feature race in the dying minutes of betting is a financial disaster.
In this case, the Jockey Club was forced to refund $43.4 million in bets.
Trainer Tony Cruz was clearly despondent that his Hong Kong Mile runner-up had played up and lost his chance at the race he'd been set for, but compensation was not far away as the stable's second elect, Bullish Luck, stormed home from last for an electrifying victory under the guidance of young Belgian ace Christophe Soumillon.
After prices were adjusted for the Perfect Partner scratching, Bullish Luck started at $68.50 and bolted away to defeat Ain't Here ($51) by 13/4 lengths, with the John Size-trained Palette Natural ($420) third.
Stewards later reported that it was the David Hayes-trained veteran Meridian Star's fractiousness in the adjoining stall that set Perfect Partner off. The Quest For Fame gelding had been a bit toey anyhow, but when rattled by Meridian Star's antics, he became too hot to handle and burst through the front of the stalls, dislodging Coetzee before careering off for a leisurely circuit of Sha Tin.
Perfect Partner did not exert himself unduly in his afternoon stroll and reached the winning post at the end of a soft canter looking relatively fresh and unruffled, causing some to question whether the club had been too hasty in ordering his withdrawal. However, Jockey Club executive director of racing, Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, said the decision to withdraw Perfect Partner was definitely the right one 'in the Hong Kong environment'.
'In Europe, it might have been seen differently but in the Hong Kong environment, where the betting is so huge, we know for a fact that our customers would not tolerate a horse running after an incident like that,' Engelbrecht-Bresges said.
'Winning would be the only satisfactory result. But if he had run, and lost, it would have been a public relations disaster.'
The refund stopped the Jockey Club almost matching last year's Stewards Cup day turnover of $968,334,502. After handing back the $43.4 million in Perfect Partner refunds, the club posted turnover for the 10-race programme as $903,253,689 - down 6.7 per cent.
