Robert Jardine was apparently the best rider among all his brothers.
COURTESY: Mr. Bernard Yiu
While top overseas success for Hong Kong connections becomes no exception nowadays, so was it long, long ago – as a matter of fact and more precisely, dating all the way back, to the very first set of founding colors ever emerged on the Hong Kong turf.
The legendary Allen & Ginter’s cigarette cards, of Richmond, Virginia, U.S., now a top collector’s brand for baseball and basketball trading cards, was initially a cigarette company that enclosed these small compliments in their cigarette packages, and back in the pioneering days, when thoroughbred racing, baseball, and boxing trumped the U.S. sporting scene – as opposed to the mammoth Major Leagues today – there was indeed a “Racing Colors of the World” series, with Hong Kong’s very own Sir Robert Jardine – his legacy spanning all the way from the Coastal Races in pre-war China to the English sporting world, and the iconic “John Peel” colors of blue jacket and silver braids – listed alongside Belmont, Morrissey, the Dwyer brothers, Withers and the Rothschild family, all pillars of thoroughbred racing on both sides of the Atlantic from then till now.
On exhibit herewith is a copy version of the cigarette card, while the original is now residing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, NY, USA.