Horseracing in China: Why 600 horses had to die

As with so many bets, it promised so much. A massive investment in Beijing's racetrack, with the hope of making more millions from a gambling-obsessed nation. But the Chinese government was never persuaded, and some of the losers had to pay - with their lives. By Richard Edmondson

It is the Chinese year of the rooster and certainly not one of the horse, at least not at the Beijing racetrack. About 600 healthy thoroughbreds are reported to have been slaughtered in the past month in the Chinese capital as a consequence of the official reluctance by the Communist Party to tolerate gambling.

The cull is unprecedented even in the harsh world of horseracing. It has caused waves of outrage among horse lovers and comes as the huge punt taken by the Hong Kong businessman Yun Pung Cheng, the man behind Tongshun racetrack in Beijing, appears to have hit the buffers with spectacular effect.

Tongshun racetrack seemed to have it all. The state-of-the-art facility, the laboratories and the huge breeding operation were developed by a man whose factories in China and Vietnam spew out the sort of promotional toys you might find tipping out of a cereal box.

It is thought Mr Cheng, known as "The Boss", might have put as much as $100m (£58.3m) into the establishment of the racing and breeding empire, all on one single, do or die, premise: That one day the hardline rulers of the Communist Party would bow to the inevitable and allow a billion Chinese indulge in their passion for gambling. After all gambling is legal in Hong Kong, now part of China. If so, it would have made the takings from his other concerns look like cornflakes.

This was an intoxicating Shangri-la as Cheng imagined an untapped betting pool 10 times the size of Hong Kong. Betting turnover in the former colony last year reached HK$62.7bn (£4.7bn) and average crowds at the tracks of Happy Valley (18,100) and Sha Tin (29,000) represented undreamed of figures in other racing jurisdictions around the world.

But while Tongshun has its benefactor, its infrastructure and its promise, it does not offer real betting. And to coin a phrase, racing without wagering is like chow without mein. There are losers in every racing enterprise, but not normally 600 of them, all paying with their lives, which is what happened when the economic tumbleweed started blowing into town.

Beijing racetrack is currently shut down, with the lingering promise that it might open up again in 18- to 24-months' time. For many, though, the ones who have had a lethal injection, there will not be another day.

It is all rotten public relations for a country that is preparing to stage the 2008 Olympics, for which the equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong as China cannot offer adequate quarantine provision. Now there will be binoculars other than those in the grandstands trained on the Chinese authorities.

"It is sickening to think of very healthy thoroughbreds being put down because the Chinese policy on racing is, frankly, in a muddle," John Smales, the chief executive of the International League for the Protection of Horses, said. "The government is very heavy handed when gambling is discovered. They are pro racing but still very much against gambling. The idea of closing a racecourse without concern for the horses is unacceptable.

"That said, if there is no racing task for these horses, it is better that they are put down rather than neglected and left to starve. Four years ago, we had to swoop on Karachi and rescue a lot of horses. Racing changed dramatically in Pakistan and a lot of owners could not pay their bills. They simply walked away from their horses and about 50 of them were left in their boxes gradually starving to death. We had to shoot some, rehouse others, but actually solved the problem.

"The Chinese have avoided that by the rather drastic act of euthanising these horses. While that's a tragedy, it's not as bad as neglect, starvation or being sold to work in front of a cart for the rest of your days. We are very sad, but grant that it could be worse. It's not cruelty. It's lack of concern for the horses and they've taken the administratively easy way out.

"China must now understand that the spotlight is on it as far as horse welfare is concerned because the 2008 Olympics is happening there. The eyes of the world are going to be on the way horses are treated in China.

"This a tragedy. But it could be worse. China has got to get its act together if it is going to be loved and admired at the 2008 Olympic Games."

Tongshun opened in August 2002 and crowds reached up to 5,000, a healthy number but not overpowering, largely because upfront betting was not part of the package. Its future was thrown into doubt in the aftermath of a government crackdown on illegal punting unrelated to racing.

It is an unending war. Chinese people are among the most culturally instinctive gamblers on earth, yet they do not have an official outlet for the habit. Their number eight is always well favoured as sounds like the word for wealth and prosperity. For the same reason, the number four in any wagering event often goes unnoticed as that word sounds dangerously similar to the word fordeath.

Death is what effectively came to the Beijing racetrack on the eve of its richest meeting of the season last month, when Cheng's patience, and perhaps his money, ran out and the operation was almost entirely shut down. It was the death knell for around a quarter of the course's equine population.

Racing with betting was a flourishing part of Chinese sporting life at the beginning of the last century. There are chronicles of the Tote boards and betting windows at Guangzhou, 50 miles north of Sha Tin, in the days when every major city possessed a track. That all changed in the Mao era which began in 1949.

Racing still happened at Guangzhou, and there was a betting culture out of sight of the Beijing authorities. Those at the track pondered a way of sidestepping restrictions, a "guessing game". Punters, or racegoers as they probably had to be titled, were charged an excessively high entry fee and tickets carried the numbers of competing horses. Prizes were then paid out of a pool made up of the admission money. It was betting, but not as they (the bureaucrats) knew it.

In time, the rules slackened and spectators in effect became fully-fledged punters. Over 40 ticket outlets sprang up in Guangzhou city and neighbouring counties. In addition, Beijing, Shanghai and Huhhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, held meetings. The island province of Hainan had plans for a course financed by foreign investors.

However, the patch was eventually removed from the all-seeing eye. Officialdom caught up and gambling was snuffed out. The State Council observed that this capitalist sin ranked alongside slavery and prostitution as one of the seven paramount evils.

The world's fastest growing economy has since been able to take on some free-market characteristics, but officials remain both wary of gambling and those that observe detect an element of hypocrisy in their attitudes. Hong Kong and Macau are perhaps the hotbed gambling centres of the world, but are allowed to continue under the "one country, two systems" policy afforded the former colonies.

Beijing invented a "guessing game" of its own at its 2002 rebirth to circumvent gambling restrictions, but now the guessing game is whether the course will ever open again.

This is the tribulation now facing Kevin Connolly, the man from a distinguished Irish racing tribe, a former trainer who met Mr Cheng when he set up in Macau some 15 years ago and now the racing director at Beijing. Like all the expats who work at Tongshun, Mr Connolly has plenty of golf and karaoke options, but even swinging and singing lose their lustre after a while.

Mr Connolly has minimised the significance of the cull this week telling the Racing Post that: "Not all the horse have been culled. Should racing start again we will have more than enough horses to race. Racing will not begin again until we have a clear direction from the government with regard to racing."

On-site trainers at Beijing have been told to take an extended holiday and, though visas have been renewed for 12 months, most are looking for employment elsewhere. "It leaves a sick taste in the mouth," Nigel Smith, an English trainer at Tongshun, said. "It is a sad story. It is a huge blow because all the horses I had got used to and the staff are gone.

"We have been told that we might restart in 18 months and will be offered our old jobs back, but is still a huge blow."

It is not the first time that Mr Connolly, who holds the position of racing director, has found himself under examination. And in the previous time, racing again revealed itself as one of the most venal of activities.

When the Sydney veterinarian Sven Arne Temmingh flew to Beijing in December 1999, he took 16 litres of highly valuable anabolic steroids in his luggage with him. However, what happened to those bottles of steroids - and a further 35 litres of anabolic steroids sent by Temmingh to Beijing and Hong Kong - remains a mystery.

Were they used on the hundreds of horses sent from Australia to Beijing as part of a fledgling breeding and racing joint venture?

The bottles of injectable anabolic steroids - including Stanazol, Deca, Drive and Supertest - have a black market value of about £87 for 10 millilitres.

At Temmingh's trial in Australia, in which he pleaded guilty to charges of wilfully supplying injectable steroids and then making false records, Mr Connolly told Justice Carolyn Simpson by videolink that before moving to China he had run the Australian racing interests of Mr Cheng, and that Temmingh was consultant veterinarian. Mr Connolly added that he "terminated" Temmingh's employment when he noticed large volumes of steroids on invoices from the veterinary product wholesaler.

Under questioning from Elizabeth Fullerton, acting for Temmingh, Mr Connolly denied instructing the veterinarian to improve the condition of the horses to be sent to China, including by using steroids.

Ms Fullerton said: "You [later] told him that he had been sacked because Mr Cheng had learnt that steroids had been used to improve the condition of horses for export and he was concerned the Chinese [authorities] might be concerned." Mr Connolly replied: "That's incorrect."

He added that about 750 horses went to China, but rejected Ms Fullerton's suggestion that those at the Beijing stud were not in good condition. He also denied asking Temmingh to "obtain substantial quantities of the anabolic steroids so the horses ... could be placed on an ongoing steroid program".

Now drugs, in this case lethal injections, have returned to bedevil horseracing in China. Just 40 miles east of Tiananmen Square, a verdant racecourse - a track fit to be compared with Paris's Longchamp in the words of one well-travelled work rider - has become a killing zone.

Yet another racing gamble seems to have gone astray, but this is one has chilling consequences for the horses at the Beijing racecourse.