A record number of tourists converged on Sha Tin for Wednesday’s National Day meeting, with Jockey Club CEO Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges declaring the “initiative we have is going viral”.
Of the 32,357 people on track, 13,097 travelled from outside Hong Kong and the overall crowd figure was the biggest on National Day since 2018.
There were also a record number of mainland visitors in attendance, with 12,060 crossing the border to soak in the action.
“The news of the day is the attendance,” Engelbrecht-Bresges said. “We had over 34,000 attendance [across Sha Tin and Happy Valley], which is amazing because if you compare the attendance to before, last year it was around 24,000.
“The amazing figure is the tourist figure. We had nearly 13,100 tourists here, which is an absolute record,” he added, pointing to the previous record of 9,654 at this year’s Lunar New Year fixture.
“It exceeds even Chinese New Year, which is an amazing figure and it’s practically up 150 per cent from last year’s National Day. This initiative we have [with the government to promote racing tourism] is going viral and it’s an excellent result.”