In Hong Kong, all gambling is administered by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Horse racing, far and away the favourite pastime of the Hong Kong population, is taken as seriously as football in Europe or baseball in the United States, and the average attendance at race meetings at the two courses, at Sha Tin and Happy Valley, exceeds 45,000.

Racing in Hong Kong is more exciting than anywhere else in the world. There are a limited number of races and a limited number of horses, so that makes each race very special indeed.
    - Basil Marcus, South African jockey who rides in Hong Kong

With cards twice a week from September to June, the Hong Kong Jockey Club receives in excess of U$10 billion in betting revenues (around 80% of the US combined take from 167 racecourses), and the totalised wagers staked on a single day's meeting can quite often be more then an entire year's betting on many European and American race-tracks.

Nevertheless, the HKJC does not make a profit, nor is it allowed to do so. Instead, the Jockey Club is Hong Kong's largest contributor to tax revenue, and is the biggest single supporter of the city's charitable causes. Indeed, at the end of the 2000 - 2001 racing season, the HKJC had given HK$1.06 billion in charitable donations to assist 180 charitable organisations and community projects.

The HKJC's own vision statement is 'to be a world leader in the provision of horse racing, sporting and betting entertainment, and Hong Kong's premier charity and community benefactor', which it achieves by adherence to its Mission Statement:

To provide total customer satisfaction through meeting the expectations of all Club customers and stakeholders - the racing and betting public; lottery players; Club Members; charity and community organisations; Government; and, ultimately, the people of Hong Kong - and thereby be one of Hong Kong's most respected organisations.
    - Mission Statement, Hong Kong Jockey Club

History

Racing began in Hong Kong in 1846, when the first race meeting was held at Happy Valley, an erstwhile piece of malarial marshland and virtually the only flat land on Hong Kong Island. Meetings initially occurred once a year and were usually timed to coincide with the Lunar New Year.

In 1884, the Royal1 Hong Kong Jockey Club itself was founded in order to formalise the administration of the territory's racing. In addition to organising all racing activities, the HKJC took a commission on bets which were still placed through private clubs. The first Club Secretary was appointed in 1907, and a Club office was set up in Central.

In 1959, charitable donations from the Jockey Club were regularly large enough to warrant the formation of The Hong Kong Jockey Club (Charities) Limited, which in 1993 was replaced by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

The 1970s saw a flurry of activity as the HKJC further regularised racing practices in Hong Kong, beginning with the switch from amateur to professional racing organisation status in 1971. Two years later, the Government authorised the HKJC to establish off-course betting (OCB) branches in order to combat illegal bookmaking. A year later, in 1974, the Club opened the first six OCB branches, and a telephone betting service commenced with 2000 accounts.

In 1978, funded by night-racing that had been introduced at Happy Valley in 1973, Sha Tin Racecourse opened at Penfold Park in the New Territories. In 1988, Telebet conducted its first test-run of the hand-held Customer Input Terminal with 200 users. Now (2002), with 125 OCB branches, 739,000 Telebet accounts, and over 80,000 Customer Input Terminals some five million betting tickets are sold for each race meeting.

The Horses

All horses racing in Hong Kong are imported - there are no breeding programmes locally. Until the mid-1990s, racehorses were imported exclusively by the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club from Europe and Australia. In the days before air-freight and then Suez, this would have meant an eastbound sea-trip via Cape Town for horses from the UK. Nowadays, around three-fifths of the 1200 or so Hong Kong stabled race-horses are bred in and imported from either Australia or New Zealand. Around a fifth come from the United States, and 10% from Ireland. The remainder come from the other traditional homes of racing; ie, France, UK and South Africa.

The Jockeys

Likewise, until recently, when professionalism has taken over from the by-gone age of the 'gentleman-jockey', the top riders are all imported too (with jockeys coming from, among other places, South Africa, France, Britain and Ireland). Nevertheless, some of the local (Hong Kong Chinese) jockeys, who have been racing under apprenticeship started (during the late 1990s) to show that they can compete with the expatriates.