THOSE FUNKY HONG KONG AND MACAU RACES…
Of course, I was much younger at the time and had only been in Hong Kong for about a year and privileged to be attending Quarry Bay Primary School despite my parents not having jobs. I remember taking the Shaukiwan tram every day from the cubbyhole we lived in on the 27th floor of a high rise called Fung Wah Mansion that was hardly a mansion.
I was the first dark skinned student in the all white school in the British colony and got used to the name calling though I had no idea what a “nigga” was. Neither did my dad.
Though I knew there was horse racing in Hong Kong, I was too young to actually see what Happy Valley Racecourse was all about until hearing just how dangerous the sport could be. This was when a race meeting in the fifties was abandoned after, I think, the fourth race. The Champion jockey at the time- Marcel Samarcq- had suffered a fatal fall.
In the same school as me and a few forms higher up was Mr Samarcq’s son Bobby and someone I knew in passing.
The death of Mr Samarcq hit my father more than it did me because he was working for the fairly recently opened Hong Kong Hilton hotel and they knew each other quite well.
The first time that I was affected by a fatal race fall was when English rider Brian Taylor, an absolute gentleman and trusted by many including former champion jockey turned champion trainer Cheng Tai-chee aka Top Cat, was dislodged from the galloper Silver Star at Shatin racecourse and died on December 8,1984.
I remember meeting Brian Taylor a few times with my father and his hotelier friends for lunch at Jimmy’s Kitchen. On that eventful day, he had already packed his bags, and had announced his retirement when asked if he would deputise for another rider. Unfortunately, he did.
Even something more strange about that day was that the brilliant French rider Philippe Pacquet was at the Shatin track as part of his recovery therapy after a career ending fall off, yes, Silver Star. He had left before the last race and never saw what had happened to Brian Taylor.
These incidents, and remembering the fall of the great South African rider Bartie Leisher always gave me an uneasy feeling about horse racing. This was until when in my late twenties and hanging out with older friends who knew which jockeys and trainers were friends with each other and had business ties with the powerful owners, the bookies and exchanged various rumours and information amongst each other. It was like “Keeping Up With The Kardashians”.
Frankly, I was far more interested in eating the samosas at the Craigengower Cricket Club box and knowing that I had to be extremely frugal with my money which was needed for a night out and maybe two drinks at the nightclub known as Mocambo where quite a few of the SCMP racing fraternity would hang out before dinner- Robin Parke, Jim McGrath, Peter Metrevelli…
During those early days, my biggest win was backing a horse owned by Steward Michael Sandberg and trained by Jack Goswell named The Swinger, the last ride in Eddie Cracknell’s illustrious career on the final day of the 1976/77 season.
No idea why, but I was positive the horse was going to win. From the moment he got to the front in what was a Happy Valley sprint, everyone else seemingly stayed back, and it made for an easy and rewarding 11-1 win that made it affordable for me to take my girlfriend at the time out for dinner at the Dateline.
Being a creative director in advertising with aspirations and perspirations to get into the music industry, our bookie was a record salesman, and the only person we knew who would take bets like a win and place multi and with my biggest win being a collect of around $3800 for a $30 outlay. I might have been hailed as a genius.
Working with us at the ad agency was the strikingly attractive Lillian Poon, daughter of horse owner Poon Wing-Kai, who all of us had plans to make her a more permanent fixture of our lives. We never got further than a poker game on Friday night with her and her brother at her parents’ home.
Lillian’s father owned the extremely profitable gallopers Ampere and Amperesand, both trained by Ng Chi-lam and always ridden by former champion Irish jockey Johnny Roe.
I got to know Johnny pretty well over the years and when married. Her was a loveable rogue, loved his whiskey and became good friends with me, and a horse owner and man about town and businessman Tony Morias who worked closely with us ad guys and Norman Cheng who ran PolyGram Records.
In my possession are hundreds of papers of scribbles by Johnny Roe for a book about his riding career in Hong Kong, training career in Macau and a personal life dogged by bad luck. He was a good man.
Whether racing in Hong Kong or Macau or even the UK and when visiting Australia, a longtime friendship was forged between jockey Neil Paine, Peter Leyshan, Gary Moore, barrister Kevin Egan, and after he arrived in Macau, Johnny Didham. It should be noted that John was anointed the “Magic Man” by friend and racing writer Lawrence Wadey. All those years ago and Johnno and I still speak everyday about the potholes in the overall management and business acumen of many leading the racing world.
Being in the racing game back then as a pastime and still being married- my then wife loathed horse racing-going racing, especially in Macau, was like a movie- a weird cross between “The Hangover”, “The Wolf Of Wall Street” and “Boogie Nights”.
Macau was fun and a series of surreal weekends with brilliant dinners at Litoral, plenty of Sangria at Fernando’s, the usual visit to China City and then suddenly in the middle of an extremely long karaoke sessions at Fidel’s at Crowne Casino in Melbourne and surrounded by many pulchritude from Gotham City.
We weren’t saints, but we weren’t sinners. We just wanted to have a good time- especially Norman and I who were something of a tag music industry team. Still are.
We met everyone we wanted to meet at the Champagne Bar of the Grand Hyatt- Bill Clinton, Keanu Reeves, Norah Jones, Tony Cruz, Frankie Dettori etc and where we almost always picked up the tab, especially when around those in racing who were always suddenly struck down by arthritis of the hand when the bill appeared.
By now, Norman and I were senior executives with the regional offices of Universal Music and then EMI Music, we had been around the massive egos of some of the biggest and smallest artists and their managers and knew who to trust and when to cut ties and turn over tables and leave.
Norman cut his ties with racing horse after watching his two last equine purchases for Hong Kong turn out to be multi million dollar duds- Who Dat Singa that he bought from WA and the aptly named Dinosaur Boy who raced three times, and came last each time after racing like a Neanderthal chasing after a crab.
Nothing and no one stays the same and extremely few of us want to travel back to the days of future past with Doc and Marty McFly. Biff is already in the White House.
We have heard all the stories, we saw the proof in the pudding, we enjoyed the long lunches at California at Lan Kwai Fong, Wyndham Street Thai and La Bodega, and we still continue to hear the most bizarre stories from the great uninformed and run far away from them.
It’s almost always those supposed “racing fans” who seem to have not very complimentary things to say about horse racing.
There are then those extremely well paid senior executives who suddenly decide that their own hires are not good enough and are immediately let go. It’s typical Trumpian behaviour.
Meanwhile, I had a bit part in Joe Pytka’s wonderful little debut movie “Let It Ride” and this made a small group of us seriously look at producing a movie that’s basically a horse racing version of “Crazy Rich Asians”- but with Australians and at least one German.
The working title is “Nearly Fine”.
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