Wednesday Night at the Races

On Wednesday night I had a last minute opportunity to go to an event at the Happy Valley Race Course here in HK.  Some of you may not know it, but horse racing is a HUGE business here in HK... as you can see from this link,  the profits from horse racing and football betting are something like US$500 million per year.  The HK Jockey club pays more than 10% of all the tax revenue generate in HK.

水曜日晩パト君一緒競馬場へ行った。PRイベントありました。香港で競馬TOTEMO大なスポーツですよ、何百億円のビズナスですよ。競馬場のビルとても高いし綺麗し。僕達一番上のクラ－ブに居ました。

Some of my friends had mentioned going before, but it never materialized.  I finally got a chance to go.  Not only did we go, but we attended some fancy pants PR event held up on the upper floors of the track's huge grandstands building:

There are like 8 or 9 stories of viewing areas,  in this part it was all fancy restaurants and bars and clubs with nice windows looking over the finish line.

I've never really watched an actual horse race in person before (i have been to tracks before, but not during races).  so it was somewhat interesting...　実は僕の競馬初めてでした。

The reason there was an event that night was because of some anniversary celebrations they are doing this week and the 'champions cup' races they were doing... so they did fireworks (but who knows, maybe they do this all the time?)

Anyway, from the look of the buildings and the jumbo screens and fireworks and all that, you can tell a lot of money was being made there... even from the lobby i noticed it - 'it feels like a Vegas Casino in here...' 

お金一杯所から、イベント為にも花火がありました。

none of the people i was with were really horse racing aficionados,  they were mostly there for the free beer (but unfortunately no free cola!) :-P　　無料ビールありましたのにコラまだ無料じゃない！

We were trying to figure out what was going on most of the time... apparently the horses and riders walk around in a pen for people to check them out one last time before betting, and then the guys in the red coat take them down to the starting gate one at a time.

In the 2nd race there was a fall and the horse ending up finishing on his own w/o a rider:

Apparently they were both OK...   no the horse didn't win.　事項有りましたから、この馬は無人で決勝点を越えた。

They also shot a TV segment in the club we were in... i think we may have been on TV (on one of those horse racing TV shows at least?)

This dapper looking british guy on the left was being interviewed by this other british guy on the right about a painting he had been commissioned to do... of, you guessed it,  a horse:

I wonder how much they paid him for that...

この人馬の絵しました。綺麗ですか？多分たくさんお金かかりました。

I had to run to meet up with some friends for poker (don't ask!) but on the way to the elevator i decided to get one more photo:

I definitely was in violation of this dress code, i was only wearing a sweater, cargo pants and sneakers, but they let me in anyway.  この所はドレスコードも有りました。不便過ぎ！（実は僕の服十分じゃないん。。。）

it reminded me a bit of the things i /don't like/ about horse racing in HK... namely that the HK jockey club is a hold over from the British colonial times,  where now socioeconomic class division has replaced the racial class divisions of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Also i'm reminded of the off-track betting location near our office that the jockey club runs... that is always surrounded by loitering old men in wife beaters and flip-flops who are clutching their racing tables in one hand and smoking or drinking with the other as they wait to see if their latest gamble has paid off...