"And they're off, and it's the Irish filly Robazala which takes the lead, followed by Irish-bred Lauravin with the Irish steed Party Pool settling in behind . . . and coming up to the final furlong, Party Pool comes with a late challenge, and at the post it's the favourite Party Pool with Robazala second and Lauravin third . . . "
Having backed Robazala I did not join in the cheering in our box, high in the grandstand. I noticed that in the adjoining box, named the "Triumph Room", businessman Yiu Kak was also looking a bit glum. The owner of the red Ferrari 355 parked conspicuously by the racecourse entrance, he had sold Party Pool after it won this race last year and had invested in Robazala and Lauravin.
And among the racegoers in our box there was yet another disappointed face, that of Peter Faistauer, who had been responsible for giving riding instructions to the jockeys of the two beaten Irish horses. He told them to hang back but they charged into the lead instead, which Chinese jockeys tend to do, allowing Party Pool to pip them at the post (though he had cleverly backed Party Pool as a saver).
We were at Beijing race course, a dusty oval track 25 miles north of the capital, and a world away from the tensions of the antiNATO demonstrations in the capital. The handful of Irish among the 2,000 crowd at Saturday's meeting, including Matt Mitchell, marketing director of the Irish Horseracing Authority and Eric Ward from Coolmore Stud, were in fact more interested in the performance of a handful of Irish-Mongolian cross-breeds in other races.
These are a new phenomenon in world racing, bred to combine the speed of thoroughbred Irish stallions with the stamina of Mongolian ponies. The first Irish stallions were brought over four or five years ago and their offspring are now getting their first real trials. Five three-year-olds were entered in Saturday's races and they won two third places.
"Considering the age disadvantage they did pretty well and we were pleased how most of them ran," said Mr Ward. "It's very early days yet and they are running for just the first or second time," said Matt Mitchell, whose job is to promote the export of Irish thoroughbred horses, an industry worth £80 million worldwide. Sales to communist China still account for only a tiny fraction of that, "but we take a longterm view - we have to fly the Irish flag in China so that when it does change, Ireland is the country they will look to", he said.
Irish horses are in fact well established in China now. Some 35 have been imported by individual buyers or clubs, and run regularly at races in Beijing and Guangzhou. Coolmore Stud in Co Tipperary is providing technical assistance and managerial advice to a joint venture involving a Hong Kong syndicate called Future Industries and a Chinese partner, Baiyinxile Livestock Farm, of which Peter Faistauer, an Austrian banker based in Beijing, is the chairman.
Last year 12 thoroughbred mares in foal, some of them big money winners at home like Anusha, winner of the Ladbrokes Hurdle at Leopardstown, were imported to China by the joint venture so that their progeny could be registered as Chinese thoroughbreds. They were nurtured in the syndicate's livestock farm, Grassland Stud in Inner Mongolia, where the grass is rich in calcium, lacking in the rest of China. They are now well placed to make a huge impact in mainland China if classic racing ever becomes a major industry here.
Their colts and fillies are this year being sold as yearlings to Chinese buyers who have long term plans for them to become the first pedigree horses from the People's Republic to break into the big money racing scene in Hong Kong's Happy Valley and other Asian and Australian venues. There still isn't much money in Chinese racing - the prize for the big race on Saturday was about £250 - but owning a horse has become a prestige thing among the emerging tycoon class on the communist mainland.
Incidentally I dropped another small packet trying to pick the winner of the third race in which two Irish cross breeds were running. It seems I know as much about equine matters as the poet Naomi Royde-Smith, who knew just "two things about the horse and one of them is rather coarse". The mare I selected finished second last.
I should explain by the way that strictly speaking gambling is forbidden in China so there are no bookies or tote at China's racecourses. Until recently a slogan stretched above the finishing post at the Beijing course read: "Resolutely Enforce the Central Committee's Strict Injunction against Gambling".
However "guessing" the winners is allowed. One buys "prediction vouchers" in what is called a "horse-racing intelligence contest" for each race and punters collect cash rewards at "redemption counters" where the prize can be as high as twenty-to-one. But whatever they are called, I ended up with a pocket full of beaten dockets.