words chris lam

Hong Kong may not be fooled by a Trojan gift, but this year the city will be welcoming in hundreds of horses.

For the Chinese, the New Year will herald in 12 months of the rat but for Hong Kong, 2008 also will be the year of the horse. A equestrian performing arts pageant and both Equestrian Olympics and Paralympics are due to create major stirs in the city this year – not only as breathtaking spectacles but also as logistical exercises. We wondered what it would take to bring Zingaro’s 36 horses from France and over 278 Olympic steeds from some 40 countries into Hong Kong with the least amount of fuss and no sudden outbreaks of an exotic disease.

In the Air
Checking into an aluminum crate may not seem like business class travel but that is how even the best thoroughbred will start its journey to Hong Kong, even before boarding the aircraft. A small concession is made for the Olympic competitors though – only two horses will be allocated to a crate which usually accommodates three. The crates are then loaded onto the jet – with the gentlest of care, of course – and, ready or not, the travellers will be en route for what could be a multi-hour flight.

Although they remain standing throughout the journey, horses are usually very polite passengers, says Dr Christopher Riggs, Head of Veterinary Clinical Services at the HK Jockey Club. “Most of them tolerate it amazingly well, even for take-off and landing. They don’t get spooked by it. They just keep munching their hay.” Nor are airsick bags part of the equine shuttle – horses seem to be immune to this unpleasant phenomenon that strikes so many human travellers. Jetlag is also not much of a problem as after time-zone changes, horses’ sleeping patterns readjust much more quickly than humans’.

Something that may be an Achilles heel for the Olympians though – and especially those from northerly latitudes – is the climate change, especially in August, when Hong Kong’s heat and humidity are at their most sweaty. To keep the horses cool, they will be treated to air-conditioned stables with facilities for bringing their temperatures down even after competitive showdowns: on the day of the the most arduous competition, the cross-country, that means 40 tons of ice must be on hand.

The Olympic horses will be arriving in three batches, with multiple flights in each batch. Those competing in eventing and dressage will arrive first on July 26, the showjumpers will come next, those competing in the Paralympics will be the last to touch down.

However, months before the Olympics, the 36 Zingaro star equine performers will land at Chek Lap Kok. They will be arriving on February 1 on two flights to give 32 performances of Battuta, an acrobatic Gypsy extravaganza, during February and March. Two flights for 36 horses may seem extravagant – a Boeing 747 can, after all, carry 81 – but it is the men, not horses, that decides the number of flights: each aircraft will only allow four groomsmen on board.

On Land
Getting the horses onto the aircraft and into the air may be the easy bit of the operation: the harder part comes after the equine passengers make their landing on the tarmac and have to be trucked to their respective Hong Kong accommodations. The goal is to streamline moving between one means of transport and another so that the horses are – and feel – completely safe the whole way through.

“There is a very finely tuned, carefully orchestrated process of unloading the horses from the aircraft and transferring them to the big lorries specifically designed to carry them,” says Dr Riggs. “There will be a fleet of these lorries, normally used for transferring racehorses between Sha Tin and Happy Valley.” Every year, the Jockey Club is in charge of trucking hundreds of thoroughbreds between the two venues for race days, as well as to and from the airport.

Measuring 40ft in length, the lorries are container-type horseboxes split into three compartments, each compartment further subdivided into two or three stalls. Inside
the stalls, the horses will be attached to rein hooks to stabilise them. But getting them into these lorries first is a feat in itself.

“When the aircraft arrives, it will be carefully unloaded,” Dr Riggs says. “The horse crates are transported outside the active aircraft zone or the perimeter fence of the airfield, to a special livestock handling area and a series of ramps. [The horses] are walked straight out of the mobile stables and into one of the air-conditioned lorries. It is about a 20m walk. The lorries take a maximum of nine horses each, but in Olympic mode they will only take six because a lot of Olympic horses are bigger than our regular racing thoroughbreds.”

The Zingaro horses will be driven directly to their encampment at Hung Hom, where for the duration of their stay in Hong Kong they will live in large tented stables brought from their home turf in Paris. But in keeping with their more elevated status, traffic police will clear the path of the Olympic competitors as they make their way to the stables at Olympic Core Venue, Sha Tin.

Health and Quarantine
One of the biggest concerns when importing horses is a two-edged health issue – on the one hand, each horse must be in a healthy condition and, on the other, whatever infectious symptoms a horse may have carried or developed as a result of its travels must be prevented from spreading throughout Hong Kong. And so foreign horses are subjected to quite strict quarantine procedures.

Usually such procedures also apply at their country of origin and so, for instance, Zingaro’s horses were in quarantine in France for three weeks prior to their departure, and will remain so for the entirety of their Hong Kong visit. This does not, of course, mean the foreign horses will be spirited off to remote stables by immigration officials for a specified length of time, but, as Dr Riggs says about the Olympian competitors, “These horses remain isolated from the local population. Therefore, they don’t actually go into quarantine as such when they arrive, but they remain in permanent isolation.” Throughout the Olympic Games, the imported horses will be allowed to compete against one another without violating any of Hong Kong’s quarantine rules. Similarly the Zingaro performers will be able to amaze human audiences but not rub shoulders with any of the local steeds.

Hong Kong keeps a close eye on horse ailments and, as part of the quarantine conditions, will guarantee there were no outbreaks of certain equine diseases here in the recorded past. The city’s vigilance includes regular blood tests and medical examinations of imported horses, whose temperatures will also be taken twice a day while they are here. Of greatest concern would be an outbreak of equine flu but most horses are vaccinated against the disease: colic and lameness are potentially more common difficulties. Yet the horses are so closely monitored they don’t get much of a chance to fall seriously ill.

As spectators, we might be awestruck by an Olympic showjumper or one of Zingaro’s acrobatic performers but perhaps bringing such displays to Hong Kong is as much a feat as the performance itself. Holding our breath during an elegant equine manoeuvre, we might stop and reflect a moment on the astounding array of causes and conditions that allowed such elegance for us to enjoy in Hong Kong.

The HK Arts Festival and HK Jockey Club are co-sponsoring 32 performances of Zingaro’s Battuta which will run from February 9 to March 23. Shows will take place at 8pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm, and on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays at 6pm, at the Hung Hom Ferry Pier Lawn. Tickets are $600 to $200 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.