Ka Ying rises to Champions Day challenge
HONG Kong Jockey Club Chief Executive Officer, Mr Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, has hailed 2025 FWD Champions Day as one of the best editions of the flagship meeting in a “very long period of time” after Ka Ying Rising, Red Lion and Japan’s Tastiera took Group One honours at Sha Tin on Sunday (27 April).
Ka Ying Rising gave the 46,000 in attendance, and the millions watching across the globe, a reminder of why he’s regarded as the world’s best sprinter.
He quickened up in frightening fashion to land the Group One six-furlong Chairman’s Sprint Prize, worth a cool £2.2 million, while Red Lion sent shockwaves through the bustling Sha Tin betting halls by taking out the second top-level contest of the day at odds of 90/1.
Owned by Ronald Arculli, who is fittingly the chairman of the meeting’s sponsor, insurance firm FWD, the six-year-old survived a nail-biting stewards’ inquiry having appeared to have caused minor interference to odds-on favourite Voyage Bubble, but it was not deemed significant enough to warrant overturning the short-head winning margin.
In the final Group One of the day, Japanese raider Tastiera put up a polished performance to take out the in the FWD QEII Cup, capping off a meeting that showed the HKJC’s strategy of staging world-class racing and entertainment events is working.
“We want to provide more world-class racing and entertainment and from the feedback we have so far, we have definitely achieved this. We will always improve and never stand still because permanent improvement is one of the values we have,” said Engelbrecht-Bresges, widely considered one of the most powerful and influential figures in horse racing.
“Looking at the performances of horses today, there’s one performance which was completely dominant and we are very glad to see the world’s best sprinter in Ka Ying Rising. He showed how good he is and how he can dominate the field. That created a wonderful atmosphere,” he said.
With an overall attendance of 46,186, the event also attracted a FWD Champions Day record of 8,244 guests from mainland China, as well as 1,083 international attendees.
World Pool, which allows punters from over 25 countries to bet into Hong Kong’s huge pools, was also a success, as commingled turnover from overseas territories was up by 10 percent.
“Looking at the pure turnover figures, we are a little bit down by three percent, but it is the fact of missing Romantic Warrior. If you see the difference in the race when Romantic Warrior runs in the QEII Cup and when Romantic Warrior is not running, it is about HK$40 million (approx. £4million),” Mr Engelbrecht-Bresges said.
“The overseas market is up by nearly 10 percent which shows again that World Pool and comingling is definitely something I think we can build on and I think this shows that Hong Kong racing, despite geo-political and economic challenges, is going from strength to strength.”
The next major fixture in the Hong Kong racing calendar is the Group One Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup (25 May), which looks set to attract international runners and will be a World Pool race for the first time.