Programming clouded by Jockey Club rhetoric
WHEN two of the turf's luminaries independently, unprompted and forcibly express the same view it is advisable to listen and listen hard.
Ivan Allan and Patrick Biancone do not need much introduction.
Allan dominated the MRA circuit for years and won the trainers' championship here in only his second season. He has also bought as yearlings the winners of four Classics, three of them he has owned himself. There is no finer judge of a yearling or of a bet. Patrick Biancone was a legend in Europe during the eighties were his runners cut a victorious swathe through the top Group One races in France, England, Ireland and North America. There is no finer trainer of a good horse.
Anywhere. So when Allan and Biancone, who do not always see eye to eye, are prepared to go on record as saying the domestic race programming fails to nurture the talent within the expanding horse population the Jockey Club's racing department should respond accordingly. The rhetoric over the past two or three seasons has been that racing in Hong Kong is no longer all about betting.
Rather, the party line has been that the racing is meaningful, in and of itself, due to the visible improvement in the quality of the Thoroughbred stock. This improvement is not in dispute and it is largely due to Jockey Club initiatives such as the private purchase griffin scheme and the Club's ability to attract to the territory the likes of Allan, Biancone and David Hayes as well as a number of the world's top jockeys. Now we have the raw material - the trainers, the jockeys and the horses - it is time that race programming was fine-tuned so that the very best horses in training have a chance to reach their potential. This is not a new theme.
Biancone, in particular, has championed the need to give the better horses and the younger horses more of a chance to develop. Saturday night's top division of the Hong Kong University Alumni Association Handicap provided a graphic illustration of the point that Biancone and Allan are making. Mr Vitality, potentially the best horse seen in the territory since River Verdon, and Bumper Star, the most improved horse of last season, were allotted onerous burdens of 146 and 145 pounds. Why? That is the simple question.