Racing: Hong Kong rocked by discovery of poison darts

By Clifford Coonan in Hong Kong
The Independent
Mar. 23, 2007

Hong Kong triads, or organised-crime gangs, are believed to be behind a sinister and elaborate poison-dart device embedded in the turf near the starting point for races at the Happy Valley racecourse.

During a routine examination of the track an inspector came across the poison dart shooter, which had 12 metal tubes, each around a foot long, filled with darts buried in the grass under the spot where the starting stalls would be placed for the three races over 1,200 metres (six furlongs) on Wednesday night's card, the Hong Kong Jockey Club said in a statement.

Happy Valley and Sha Tin are Hong Kong's two tracks. Turnover on a single day's racing in Hong Kong can outstrip the income many European or American courses generate in a whole year. A single race here can take in nearly Ł20m and the gambling-mad people of Hong Kong spend Ł5.4bn a year on the racing.

The bizarre device could have harmed one, a few or all of the horses in the stalls. The tubes were wired together and linked to a wireless receiver, and spaced in a way that each tube would aim upwards at the horse standing overhead.

"The full nature of the device and its intended purpose has not been established. However, no explosives were found," the Jockey Club statement ran.

A senior police source told local media that he believed the plan was to fire some kind of tranquilliser upwards to where the starting stall was. "I doubt very much that it was meant to do anything more than just slightly tranquillise the horse. That's my speculation," the source said.

It is fairly obvious that the poison-dart shooter was related to gambling and most likely linked to the triads, said the police source.

"It could well be that triads are part of that, especially the gambling which is done outside the Jockey Club's system. If you can get the horse to slow down just enough, it looks like a normal race and the favourite may not come in."

The darts had been sent to a laboratory to try to identify the chemical used.

Jockeys were told few details before racing began, and afterwards, several riders said they were amazed that they had not heard anything about the situation before the race and some said they were disappointed that the Jockey Club had not been able to tell them more.

Hong Kong's Independent Committee Against Corruption (ICAC) has done much to clean up the racing world in Hong Kong but it still gets its fair share of scandals, many related to the network of secret societies or triads, criminal gangs who control the territory's underworld. Jockeys have even been murdered for telling of underground betting practices.

Five years ago the Irish jockey John Egan and South Africa's Robert Fradd were suspended by the Hong Kong Jockey Club during an investigation into the supply of information to bookmakers. Weeks ago Australian jockey Chris Munce was jailed for 30 months for giving tips for reward.

Could the tranquillising dart scam really work?

Accuracy

Even using a remote-control device, picking out the right horse and getting the dart on target would be tricky.

Drugs don't work

The races which appear to have been the target for the scam were sprints staged over six furlongs and would have lasted little more than a minute. It is arguable whether the drugs would have taken effect in time.

Profit

If the plan had been to lay in-running bets on the drugged horses on betting exchanges there would have still been uncertainty that the drugs had taken effect. Any payouts would have been suspended once foul play was discovered.