Divine Calling wins at Sha Tin on Sunday. (Kenneth Chan)
The shimmering mirage of imminent organised horse racing on the Chinese mainland continues to claim thirsty foreign victims, but there were those thinking aloud on Sunday about a potential flood of influential owners in Hong Kong from the same place.
Having seen Akeed Mofeed and Gold-Fun’s owner, Pan Sutong, emerge seemingly overnight to spend up big on the talent that swept away some of our biggest races, the sand bags were going up this time due to Divine Calling.
His first-time owners, Wei Yu and Liu He, were also designated “mainland” owners, like Pan, and also spent a lot of money – A$2 million has been bandied about, rightly or wrongly.
Divine Calling was also a special case as the first test of a role created at the Jockey Club in 2013 for former high-profile Australian owner Nick Columb to guide and assist so-called “mainland” owners with big coin to buy superior stock.
And by the looks of Divine Calling’s win on Sunday, the job is right – he still has it all to do but looks a horse who can do it.
So we suddenly found ourselves among people suggesting these “mainland” owners would take over Hong Kong racing. After all, there must be millions of newly wealthy people interested in having a champion racehorse.
Is it true? Are they getting special favours? And why is mainland in quotation marks?
Super Lifeline wins the Gr3 Hong Kong Macau Trophy
Last things first. The inverted commas are to indicate the airy fairy nature of the description, mainland owner.
Everyone knows you can’t be an owner without being a Jockey Club member, of at least “racing member” status. And you must be a Hong Kong resident to be a Jockey Club member, right?
Wrong. The club scrapped residential requirements two years ago, which demanded at least 180 days a year here to be ruled a Hongkonger. With actual long-term Hong Kong residents spending more and more time in China, or elsewhere, running business interests, the club faced the looming reality this requirement could soon disqualify existing owners.
Many Hongkongers have a mainland background somewhere anyway. So the tag mainland owner is a bit fuzzy. There are even owners who have joined in through the Beijing Clubhouse who hold, for example, Canadian passports, to further muddy the waters.
The original, stated intention of the Jockey Club’s Beijing Clubhouse was a members’ club, like Sha Tin or Happy Valley. Swimming pools, gyms, bars, restaurants, accommodation – a home away from home for members who travel frequently to Beijing.
There are about 900 members of the Beijing Clubhouse, who have some hoops to jump through if they wish to progress to racehorse ownership in Hong Kong.
Of course, they undergo the same processes as anyone else, need to show serious business and property interests here and a real connection to Hong Kong and passion for racing.
The Jockey Club says it doesn’t want remote owners, who will watch from afar and not really participate. Then there are more background checks before they move up to the racing member status that makes them eligible to enter the permit ballot.
From fewer than 20 of this type of racing members, we understand 12 have permits, but the club is in no hurry to expand this area of ownership, which would put more pressure on the already-long waiting lists.
It’s no flood and whether we called it mainland or something else is open to debate, but there is now a certain section of membership, made up of high net-worth people coming via the Beijing Clubhouse pathway and who regard ownership at an elite level as a status symbol for which they are willing to spend proper money for proper horses.
Alan Aitken – www.scmp.com
