Andrew Farrell visits the track for another sample of South Korea’s sporting culture
After 20-odd years of avidly watching Ireland’s national rugby team in the old Lansdowne Road, following Leinster from Donnybrook to the RDS, my sporting experiences in South Korea have been somewhat limited.
There has been a lot of baseball, in fairness, but the enjoyment is more Korea’s insatiable desire to create the world’s best (and at no price to friendliness) big game atmosphere, with fried chicken and beer in the glorious east Asian summer. Baseball, however, remains an alien concept to many of my fellow colleagues, especially those not from North America.
Soccer in South Korea has been brutally challenged recently by allegations of match fixing, but low attendances in the huge World Cup stadiums predate all the supposed skulduggery and corruption. Rugby, too, was a mere one-off, and the Japanese demolition of the South Korean side has not inspired a rush to support the game here since. Golf, too, is out of the reach of most due to the exorbitant prices for 18 holes on an averagely maintained course.
So step forward the sport of kings, uniquely fashioned against the grain of modern-day South Korea. At Seoul Race Park, gambling is legal but alcohol is forbidden – on both fronts the exact opposite from the soccer and baseball stadiums.
Situated in the relative calm of Gwacheon in southern Seoul, the race park is the home of the Korean Derby and Grand Prix and runs meetings every Saturday and Sunday all year round. Admission is just 50 cents to the park, which holds some 80,000 people in its two joined grandstands, comically – but not untypically for Korea – named Happyville and Luckyville. They resemble Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport more than a sporting arena.
Deep in the bowels of Luckyville, and in the promenade in front of Happyville, Korean men – let’s be honest here, very few women were among the healthy crowd for my horse racing debut – violently tossed their racing programmes in the air, ripped up their betting slips and loudly uttered the two most prominent forms of curse words in the local language. They say a bad day at the races is better than a good day at the office. Maybe not for some.
At the betting office, one man next to me walked away with just over 1.2 million won in cash (approximately €800) while nearby, an elder gentleman sat on the ground, propped up by the wall, wailing aggressively as the TV screens showed replays of the day’s final race, which went to a photo finish. It seemed to take an eternity for the result to come through, as thousands gathered to watch the big screen from Happyville. Their monumental roar was drowned out by a collective groan as the yellow lights bought up the identity of the winning horse.
Overall, the afternoon was highly enjoyable but lacked the glamour of a big race meeting at home – the champagne, the exquisitely dressed men and women, the party atmosphere – as locals clamoured in hallways and behind escalators to eat their kimbap lunches away from the chilly November day. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
As for me? Successive early wins had friends inevitably hailing the ‘luck of the Irish’ but in reality, I couldn’t read the form guide accurately, and effectively picked the horses simply by looking at them in the parade ring.
Of course my masterful run was eventually halted, but enough money was won to enjoy some beers after a dry day at the races.
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
