The Lunar New Year meeting at Sha Tin said a great deal about the state of racing in Hong Kong, the demand for it and the place it holds in the Chinese psyche.
According to the Jockey Club, some 1.1 million calls were placed to Telebet on Saturday, we had a boom crowd on course and the best turnover for a decade on the most popular day's racing of the season.
A mood of spirited optimism permeated the day to match the weather and the good quality racing. Even having the main event fall in an upset to Dim Sum proved a bonus as winning jockey and full-time showman Olivier Doleuze dropped to his knees and kissed the track to the delight of fans.
The big crowd of 89,000-plus at Sha Tin held its own stories. One was undoubtedly the police presence on the off-ramp into the racecourse from the highway that slowed traffic to a crawl, even kilometres from the track.
While the ramp has clearly become something of a revenue raiser for police at just about every Sha Tin meeting, we thought they might have given it a day off, knowing that a big crowd would be expected and that the off-ramp trap would exacerbate what would likely be difficult traffic conditions anyway. But that was not to be and an excruciating approach eventuated.
As to the crowd itself, well the giveaways at the gate do have an effect on attendance figures, and saved club officials from having to revert to the house full sign in the early stages of the day. The crowd of 89,000-plus exceeds the Sha Tin safety limit of 85,000, but it is a figure for the number of people who attended the track at some stage during the day, not necessarily all at the same time.