After cutting his teeth as a cadet steward for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Joseph Chan Nim-him has relished the hands-on nature of his first season as a British Horseracing Authority (BHA) stipendiary steward.

The first Hong Kong-trained steward to branch out and work in another major racing jurisdiction, Chan has been plying his trade in the United Kingdom since March this year.

“After more than six years as a cadet stipe at the Jockey Club, I wanted to see some more horse racing around the world when I was still young,” said Chan.

“I’m now 30, so I’m not that young, but I wanted to see more of what’s happening around the globe and I thought the best chance was to start my journey now.”

After spending pretty much all his life in Hong Kong – “I come from a middle class family and didn’t have a chance to study abroad” – Chan was eager to try something new and he quickly embraced the change that came with moving his career to Britain.

“Here you have a lot of hands-on experience. In Hong Kong you have five stipendiary stewards and three cadets during a race day, but here you have only two stewards and one what they call a race day assistant,” said Chan.

“So that means you have a lot of hands-on experience. You have to report the races by yourself when normally that would be done by the chief steward in Hong Kong.

“Here it’s mostly done yourself and because there’s not many stewards at a meeting, you have to do the binoculars, report all the incidents, and we’ve got different whip rules compared to Hong Kong – you have to count all the strikes yourself, which is a new technique for me because I didn’t have to do that back in my days in Hong Kong.”

Part of the “south” bracket of BHA stewards, Chan works at racecourses like Ascot, Windsor, Lingfield Park, Kempton Park, Epsom and Goodwood and has enjoyed putting into practice what he learned in Hong Kong.

“You can really test yourself and what you’ve learned at the Jockey Club and you can test whether you can apply those skills here, because now you really have the experience to question the jockeys and to deal with interesting cases,” he said.

“One of my cases, there was a false start at Windsor during the summer and all the jockeys were banned for 10 days for not pulling up when the false-start flag was raised.

“We had to call them all in and give the days to them and you have to explain to the public and the press why you have come up with this decision.

“The rules in the UK state that if they pull up they can go back and race again, so that’s why they got banned for not pulling up. You won’t experience this type of situation in Hong Kong and you have to make decisions in split seconds.”

Chan considers the recent Champions Day at Ascot – which saw Calandagan post an impressive win in the Group One Champion Stakes (2,000m) – and Sandown’s Coral-Eclipse Day as the highlights of his first season in the UK.

“When you go into those state-of-the-art racecourses you expect it should be a good day and all the jockeys mostly will behave themselves. You can just enjoy the day,” he said.

While Chan is unlikely to be leaving Britain any time soon, his stint at the BHA could well be the first stop on a tour of world racing – one that may or may not culminate back in Hong Kong.

“You never know. I would say at this age I would prefer to have more experience before I make this decision,” said Chan when asked about his desire to return home.

“I will keep working for the BHA and if there’s a chance to have a look in the Middle East or even Australia, that would be great, but it’s too early to say whether I will get back to Hong Kong.”