Dorian Kos wraps up Sunline Management Scholarship

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my last blog from what has been an amazing seven months of learning and travelling for me.

My last stop took me to Hong Kong, where I discovered a completely different way to approach horse racing. One of the fundamental things I learnt about the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which is a key point, is that it is a not-for-profit organisation, which allows them to reinvest all of their profits into prizemoney and charities, amongst others. It is very important to know that horse racing in Hong Kong is organised around making people confident to gamble and encouraging them to bet on the races. Therefore, when speaking with different departments, I realised how everything had been made to maximise profits on this end of the spectrum by making betters feel confident, disclosing as much information as possible and being very transparent about everything that happens with the horses. The second key thing about Hong Kong racing, is that everything is made to try and keep it at a very elite level, which is another main focus around which the processes are organised.

While I was there, Danny Rolston put together an amazing schedule for me to allow me to talk to a variety of people and get a good understanding of the way the jockey club functions. I have spoken to the registry team, which deals with the entries and declarations, but what I found most interesting was their membership structure and their ownership structure. In Hong Kong, it is quite difficult to become a member of the jockey club, and once someone is a member, they need to enter a ballot and be drawn to gain a “permit of entry”, which allows them to import a horse into the country. It was very interesting to gain an understanding of this process and also why it is needed, as they only have a fixed number of stables and no stud farms to allow horses to spell. They need to keep the horse population at around 1200 horses.

I have also had the chance to speak and have a stables visit with the stables manager, who explained to me the way that the trainers are granted stables and how they all have the same limit of horses they are allowed to have in training. They have also recently opened a new centre in Conghua, in Mainland China, which is giving the trainers more training options than what they have in Hong Kong, with mostly a dirt training track, a swimming pool, and walkers.

During my time there, I was able to attend a handicapping meeting following a Happy Valley race meeting, where the team gave me a better understanding of how they review handicapping ratings following races, which is crucial in Hong Kong, knowing that a vast majority of their races are handicaps categorised in 5 different classes. They have also explained to me how they initially attribute values when horses are imported, whether as raced or unraced prospects and criterions that they have in place in order to maintain such an elite level of racing in the country. The way in which a horse is handicapped also has a lot to do with trying to make the racecourse a fair playing field with close finishes to encourage people to bet on these races.

During a Sha Tin race meeting, I was very lucky to be allowed to follow the stewards for the day and understand how they try to keep the racing fair for betters to feel confident that each horse is going to be given their best possible chances at winning the race.

Another thing I got a very good understanding of is the Hong Kong International Sale, which has the purpose to try and import high-quality racehorses into the country. Each year, the Hong Kong Jockey Club hosts that auction of unraced but tried horses. These horses have been mostly selected as yearlings and broken in through partners in England and Australia. The purpose of this sale for the Jockey Club isn’t to make money but rather to try to help keep a high level of racing. I was very lucky to see closely how Danny Rolston selects the yearling for this sale and even help him put a few statistics together to help in his selection process, which gave me an understanding of the different resources he uses to help him select the best possible fits for the very specific type of horses Hong Kong racing requires.

My last placement at the Hong Kong Jockey Club took me to Jamie Richards's stable for a few days, where he very kindly took me along to show me his training methods and explain to me a lot of differences he found in Hong Kong compared to training in New Zealand. I witnessed how he makes the most of the facilities he has available to give his horses the best possible chances of performing. I got to see not only his training methods but also all the processes in place by the jockey club to make life easy for the trainers. It is pretty amazing to see everything the jockey club has in place as they organise all the finance aspects, gear sourcing, feed, and even allocate staff to each trainer, meaning the main focus of the trainer is to train their horses, and manage their client relations.

On top of everything I have already spoken about, I also got to go with the vets for a morning after a race meeting and understand how the clinic operates there, and I also got a tour of the Jockey Club Equestrian Centre, where they rehabilitate a number of retired racehorses as well as teaching kids how to ride.

I was very lucky to be able to attend 2 Happy Valley night race meetings and 2 Sha Tin race meetings and see the big differences between both racecourses and understand how horses can perform on one course but not the other. I was also able to see the massive interest in racing of the Hong Kong population as a whole with how crowded the racecourses were, no matter how good the quality of the races were on the day.