The Macau Jockey Club hosts its final race meeting March 30 with a 14-race card, providing trainers, jockeys, and hundreds of stable staff and administrators, who are facing career oblivion, one last chance to shine at Taipa Racecourse.
It's almost certain that racing in Macau will end for good, having hosted Thoroughbred racing since 1989, its demise largely brought on through mismanagement by the privately owned Jockey Club, which was taken over by the late casino magnate Stanley Ho in 1991.
The government withdrew the club's license in January, forcing the club to close as of Saturday.
As reported March 28, expatriate Australian trainer Geoff Allendorf will remain in Macau to ensure his and other trainers' horses receive the best of care before they are shipped elsewhere.
He will move back to Australia eventually. For others, such as champion trainer Joe Lau, the future is less certain.
Expatriate Malaysian Lau, who was granted his Macau trainer's license in 1993, currently leads the premiership with 23 winners.
Former Macau Jockey Club steward and administrator Michael Beattie, who now runs the Clarence River Jockey Club at Grafton, has no doubt that Lau could make a successful fist of training in another jurisdiction if he chose to do so.
"I regard Joe Lau as one of the best horse trainers I've seen anywhere in the world that I've dealt with," Beattie told us.
"When Joe got one ready and said, 'this'll win today', they won more often than they didn't. If Joe Lau decides to turn his hand to horse training anywhere else in the world he will, in my mind, undoubtedly be a success."
As for Allendorf, who made it clear he had no intentions of taking out a trainer's license in Australia, he may well still be involved with the horses.
"I'd have to have my finger in the pie somewhere. That's all I can do, I've been with horses all my life, a jockey first and a horse trainer second," he says.
"I do love my golf, but I can't win enough money to survive on that. Other than that, I'll play it by ear."
