Jockey Club cancels race meeting as Super Typhoon Mangkhut bears down on Hong Kong
The club hopes to schedule a replacement meeting on December 29
by Tom Biddington
on Saturday, September 15, 2018 3:49 PM
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The Jockey Club has cancelled a race meeting for the first time in five years as Super Typhoon Mangkhut bears down on Hong Kong.
Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges and his team made the decision to abort Sunday’s Sha Tin meeting at 3pm on Saturday, confirming it was the only real option.
“We have a team who is in permanent contact with the observatory and when it became very apparent of the likelihood of a typhoon No 8 signal in the early hours of [Sunday], we activated the necessary procedure to cancel the race meeting,” Engelbrecht-Bresges said.
“It is very clear to us the safety of our employees and our customers comes first. If you look at our employees, they have to be informed early because a lot of them are on shifts and when you have a late cancellation then it is very inconvenient for them.
“The worst thing would be to have to cancel during a race meeting so with the kind of information we have, we felt reasonably comfortable making this decision.”
It is not often the Jockey Club is forced to abandon meetings – this is the first card cancelled since September 2013 when Typhoon Usagi hit Hong Kong, while Typhoon Fengshen (mid-2008) was the one before that. As soon as the No 8 typhoon signal is raised, the Jockey Club cannot race as a matter of safety.
Despite the cancellation, the Jockey Club will not miss out on around HK$1.2 billion of turnover as it will schedule a replacement meeting at Sha Tin on Saturday, December 29, subject to government approval.
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