Racing gallops on despite coronavirus

Recent race meetings at the mighty theatres of Sha Tin and Happy Valley have taken place before eerily empty, silent grandstands – as happens most weeks down at the Vaal, where sometimes it seems there are more people involved in putting on the show than there are ordinary punters.

In Hong Kong it’s not a lack of interest that’s emptied out the vast stands, but mortal fear.

The novel coronavirus has officially killed about 500 people and has most of the northern hemisphere in a panic – and particularly China, where the bug first raised its ugly head.

The Chinese government, amid a nightmare scenario of millions of people shuttling across the country for Chinese New Year celebrations and spreading germs far and wide, appealed for people to avoid congregating in large numbers. And that included enclaves such as Macau and Hong Kong.

Macau quickly cancelled all horse racing until further notice, but the game is a rather bigger thing in Hong Kong – especially in terms of tax rake-off – so racing has battled on.

Last week, the local Jockey Club closed most hospitality sites at Sha Tin and Happy Valley courses, including the very popular beer garden, and installed body temperature monitoring at all entrances.

Good-citizen racegoers also stayed away as part of a voluntary personal quarantine initiative.

This week, the Jockey Club closed all its 101 off-course betting branches indefinitely after discussions with the Hong Kong government which highlighted how “critical” the next two weeks will be in terms of “containing the disease and preventing a community outbreak”.

Customers can still place wagers on racing and football via automated services and online.

Only owners, staff, key personnel and those with prior bookings were allowed at the Wednesday 5 February meeting at Happy Valley and further reduction of on-site participation was likely for Saturday’s Sha Tin fixture. On-course staffing was cut from the usual 11,000 to 3,000.

The corona scare has even achieved what police, militia and gangs of “heavies” could not – bring Hong Hong’s angry anti-government protests to a halt.

Remarkably, racing gallops on. And you can see why from last week’s statistics: attendance at both tracks was down a total of 95,980 yet betting turnover only dropped from HK$1.7418 billion to HK$1.4596 billion.

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