It’s not exactly a surprise, but as has been reported, Jockey Blake Shinn is returning home at the end of this Hong Kong racing season.
Apart from two years of trying to survive in this zit called the “racing bubble", there’s come the need to see his mother, and the realisation how continuing to carry on for any longer in what he’s described as “like being in jail” was something impossible to do as it was causing mental stress.
Of course, his decision is the correct one. His Group 1 wins etc is one thing as is the fact that the Australian Jockey is having a very good season. But one’s mental health and family, however, is something else altogether and which comes first. If family needs you, there’s nothing to think twice about. You go. If you feel yourself falling apart, there’s a need to remedy this.
I left Hong Kong for Melbourne a couple of weeks ago to visit my parents’ gravesites and pay my respects to them. They were asking for me- their only child- whereas being swamped in negativity 24/7 in Hong Kong, which remains my home, was affecting my sleep patterns and general being.
Dreams had become nightmares and pushing the limits for daily survival was causing incredible stress which I was trying to suppress with tranquillisers. Self medication never works. The only cure is the love of a good woman and trying to find that thing known as happiness.
This happiness thing is not something that just happens. It requires work and being with loving and positive people.
This particular breed of human being barely exists in Hong Kong today. Everyone seems to either be engrossed in themselves- and almost always somehow talking about money- or so lost that they’re happy to be drowning in a sea of negativity.
On Saturday, I watched a few races from Hong Kong and could see just how tired the jockeys I know personally were looking- and how they were riding- and the quality of the racing product. This itself seemed to be taking place in its own cocoon.
Whether right or not, Zac looked downcast even after riding a winner for Richard Gibson. Eyes don’t lie.
This wasn’t the Zac Purton I know and like and respect and this wasn’t the Zac who showed how competitive and brilliant he is at last year’s Hong Kong International Jockeys Championship at Happy Valley Racecourse when riding against the best in the world- James McDonald, Tom Marquand, Hollie Doyle and others who forced him to raise his game. He did and won the Championship for Team Hong Kong.
Having seen Marquand, William Buick, Ryan Moore and Hollie Doyle in action the night before on television, and on Saturday afternoon, seeing the competitive riding of J-Mac, the Gnasher, Tommy Berry, Jamie Kah and others at Randwick and Caulfield with racing fans allowed on course with no masks etc, an athlete the calibre of Zac feeds on having top international competition.
It’s needed to get his motor running- along with having the exhilaration of spectators cheering him on.
There’s nothing like this for him or anyone else in Hong Kong racing. Blame this on for starters on no tourism in Hong Kong.
Who would have thought that “Asia’s world city” would be allowed to fall apart so quickly- and with no safety net?
Getting back to horse racing which pales in significance to an entire city on borrowed time, what about the Zac and Joao show and Joao Moreira, you might say?
That show is over and the Brazilian magic man’s riding I saw on Saturday looked tired. It’s almost as if he didn’t care and had weightier issues on his mind.
Maybe he does care, but that once effusive personality definitely wasn’t there. I don’t think he even rode a winner despite being on some raging favourites.
Anyone in any industry needs people who can challenge each other to help bring out their best. Without this, everything looks and becomes drab.
It’s not unlike Ben Hur racing himself in a chariot race and winning.
Being able these days to go out in Melbourne without masks, not needing to fall in line with social distancing measures that take the fun out of going out, and able to hear ‘live’ music again, has made me realise that many cities are returning to getting back to “living with Covid-19”.
Most of us have home testing kits and if feeling unwell, common sense comes into play.
This is unlike Hong Kong where one’s rights to live life as a human being have been taken away by a government with its own agendas and offering people vague promises of what could be described as “almost normalcy”.
Those with no options to leave the city, accept the crumbs thrown their way and pretend that things are “getting better”.
Maybe they are for those stuck in the mire of a dire Hong Kong. In reality, nothing is really getting “better”. The fear of everything is still very much there and the main topic of conversation.
After almost three years that include social unrest and which morphed into what started out as the Wuhan virus, Hong Kong is broken. Its people are lost and the job of putting Humpty Dumpty together is going to take decades before anything new can be created so that tourism can be revived.
So, when someone with very little understanding of Hong Kong and its psyche writes that jockeys and trainers in the “racing bubble” have had it “much tougher than other Hongkongers”, they’re out of touch with reality. They’re actually in their own little bubble and should go back from whence they came.
Every single jockey and trainer have the financial needs and the right passports to leave Hong Kong. They have options. This cannot be said about all Hong Kong Belongers. Many don’t have this luxury. They’re stuck in their shoeboxes in the city trying to make ends meet. And they’re lost in that petrified forest.
Having said this, for those jockeys herded and prodded into this “racing bubble”, it’s quite incredulous that they have managed to deal with their demanding work as race riders and this stunted way of living for as long as they have.
Surely, no amount of hoarding more and more money is worth it compared to what all this might be doing to their families while silently fighting to keep bogeymen playing mind games at bay?
Here, no one is right nor is the winner whereas this “racing bubble” has now outlived its effectiveness, if there ever was one.
If this bubble rolled around as something that was needed a couple of years ago to show the government that the Hong Kong Jockey Club was falling in line with their mandate in order to “keep racing going”, was this really necessary? And “keep going” for who exactly?
Even if it was necessary, what was the exit plan?
Everyone who went along with being compliant “bubble heads” have had enough. Some are now demanding financial compensation for what they’ve had to endure.
Well, sorry, but this only shows more hypocrisy and a lack of moral fibre.
No one has come out of this racing bubble looking good. If anything, this unholy alliance has shown up everything Hong Kong racing lacks, especially empathy, and how greed, self interests and elitism are always at work.
It’s also very apparent that now comes divisiveness in the shape of The Blame Game.
There’s a very definite need for some form of damage control that has tangible answers and not more vapid Corporate Speak.
There’s now a need to show what the racing community can give back to a city that has made many in the game multi millionaires and billionaires.
It’s not only payback time, it’s about sketching out even a fuzzy picture of where Hong Kong racing is heading and ensuring that options based on reality checks are in place.
As mentioned to me last week, Blake Shinn won’t be the only person in racing to leave the city soon.
And then what?
Sometimes, it’s times like these that make some rise to the challenge of changing the narrative and seeing that the light at the end of the tunnel is not another oncoming train.
Hong Kong has had enough of these.
The light is on amber. Make it turn green.
