Morfhis became the latest big name horse in Korea to be beaten while giving away a considerable amount of weight under handicap conditions. Simjangui Godong was the beneficiary at Seoul last Sunday as Morfhis joined the likes of Blue Chipper, Moonhak Chief and Tiz Plan in going down to defeat while conceding 8kg to his rivals.

With the current Covid restrictions on attendance plus the absence of online wagering, Korean racing’s income has been devastated over the past sixteen months. and with prize funds having dried up, there are currently no Listed, Stakes or Graded races. Therefore the only option to keep racing going for the top horses is to run handicaps and with the top rated horses putting the others out of the handicap scale, some huge weight imbalances have become inevitable.

Blue Chipper was beaten by a spritely Doctor Carson on May 2nd while later in the month at Seoul Tiz Plan ran 2nd to Brigadier General before the 2019 Korea Cup winner Moonhak Chief trailed home in 4th place behind Heuk Jeonsa. Over 1400M last Sunday, Mofhis gave it a good shot but at such a weight disadvantage was no match for Simjangui Godong, the 2020 Segye Ilbo Cup winner. Blue Chipper and Doctor Carson will meet again this coming Sunday with both declared for Busan’s class 1 event over 1400M. An apprentice jockey claiming 3kg has been booked for Blue Chipper this time.

In other news on the track, trainer Min Jang Gi reached the milestone of 500 career winners last Sunday. The trainer saddled Winning Dancer to victory in race 4 at Busan. Min, who took Success Story to the Dubai World Cup Carnival in 2016, is currently trainer of Blue Chipper.

Yeongcheon Racecourse Makes Breakthrough

More than eleven years after it was first announced and six years after it was initially due to open, work is finally set to get underway on Yeongcheon Racecourse, the nation’s third thoroughbred track. With the granting of a building permit this week, construction will now be allowed to begin.

The much delayed project received a huge boost earlier this year when an extension to the Daegu subway line number 1 was announced in the 4th National Railway Network Construction Plan. This would include a stop within walking distance of the racecourse site, bringing mass transit to what is currently a hard to reach location. The latest scheduled opening date for Yeongcheon Racecourse, which will feature Korea’s first turf track, is now September 2024.

Busan Reopens To Customers But Jeju Closes Again

Punters were welcomed back to the Busan Racecourse as well as the city’s two off-track-betting locations last week as social distancing restrictions in the city were lowered to level “1.5”. However, Jeju Island, which saw over 1 Million flight passengers arrive during April with many more expected over the summer months, has accordingly raised its own level to “2”, the same level as Seoul and the surrounding regions, meaning that while racing can continue on Jeju, customers cannot attend.

That means that for the first weekend in June, seven locations are open, all with restricted attendance. They are Busan Racecourse (1,419 attendees permitted), Busan Dong-gu OCB (383), Busan Yeonje OCB (480), Gwangju OCB (919), Daegu OCB (505), Changwon (196) and Cheonan (634). All attendance must be pre-booked on the MyCard app.

Dortmund Joins Insta

Great Hill Farm, which stands new American arrivals Dortmund and Flashback, as well as locally bred stallion Magic Dancer, has joined instagram and has started posting regular pictures and English language updates about their star new import. Their instgram id is “greathillfarmnow”.