conghua racecourse and training centre Conghua racecourse and training centre originated on the site used for the 2010 Asian Games. Little is left from that infrastructure after the groundworks at the site completely reshaped the landscape in order to fit in a 660-horse training centre and racecourse
The Hong Kong Jockey Club’s eight-year China plan is underway, writes Sally Duckett
D
eciding to build a new racecourse with an associated start-of-the-art training centre is a significant undertaking – if that project is carried out in a neighbouring country that has little in the way of horseracing background and operates strict border controls, it surely is a mountaineous project that should be abandoned before even attempted. If that project is also seen as a strategic venture with a number of goals to achieve, not least to take a successful industry forward through into the next 50 years of development, then the importance of a successful conclusion cannot be underestimated. But assuming that this is something that could not be achieved does not take into account the vision of the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), which has – in eight years since the idea was first mooted (and in reality far longer when it was realised that there was literally no space to move the horseracing industry forward in Hong Kong), planned, designed, co-operated, worked with Chinese authorities and government officials, financed and successfully built the Conghua racecourse and training centre. It is based some 200k inside the Chinese border, around a four-hour horsebox drive from Sha Tin. The site is now – after the HKJC had to merely dig off a mountain top in order to create a plateau – a fully-fledged racecourse in waiting and a fully operative training centre.
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Uphill gallop: 1,100m rising 1.54% Stable barns, horsewalkers
China in their hands There are both spaceous Dirt and Turf tracks, while all the race day infrastructure is in place – changing rooms, stewards’ rooms, parade rings; all are immaculately clean, modern and eerily unused just waiting to spring into life. The racecourse will be staging its first non-betting, Chinese-based HKJCoperated “exhibition races” in March 2019 with an anticipated crowd of around 4,000 – 5,000 housed under temporary grandstands. The racecourse has been designed as a slightly smaller replica of Sha Tin. As a training centre, there are a number of training tracks – again largely based on the
40-year old site in Hong Kong, but with the addition of a 5 degree uphill training gallop, as requested by the trainers – alongside numerous trotting circles and slow canter tracks, all-weather turn-out pens, 20 grass turn-out paddocks, horsewalkers, a round and straight swimming pool, veterinary surgery and centre, rehabilitation zone, staff and management accommodation, a human training centre for apprentices, staff, farriers and vets as well as a smart owners’ facility. There are 660 stables in a number of barns, and trainers can take a “wing”, which can house up to 34 horses.
