Neoguri hands Jockey Club an expensive blow

Tropical storm Neoguri is set to cost the Jockey Club hundreds of millions of dollars of business after last night's decision to cancel the meeting at Happy Valley this afternoon.

The heavy rainfall yesterday and the forecast of more to follow forced the club's hand and the fixture was cancelled at 8.30pm.

'The course itself is in great condition,' said executive director of racing Bill Nader. 'But there has been a lot of rain and the forecast is for the heavy rain to continue [today] and our concern is with the possibility of the storm drains overflowing. That could be a potentially disastrous situation if we get people to Happy Valley and areas around the track become flooded and we have to send them home again. That's not a good customer relations exercise and it's a situation we would prefer to avoid.'

The 10-race meeting might have been expected to hold around HK$950 million in betting turnover. And, while the meeting may not be lost altogether, part of that turnover will be. 'We will apply to the Home Affairs Bureau for a new date and the gap in the programme which jumps out at you is June 4,' Nader said. 'We race on June 1 and June 8 but there's no midweek fixture. The downside is we had 10 races planned and a midweek card is only eight races, it's a logical replacement otherwise.'

The switch from weekend to midweek status is likely to see a drop of at least HK$150 million in turnover.

It was the fifth Happy Valley meeting to be cancelled due to weather in the past 51/2 years. Two were lost when typhoon No 8 signals were hoisted, another due to torrential rain on race night and the most recent - September 13, 2006 - called off due to very heavy rain the day before the meeting in similar circumstances to today's cancellation.