Brian Kan Ping-chee (; 24 November 1937 – 12 February 2022) was a five-time champion

horse trainer A horse trainer is a person who tends to horses and teaches them different disciplines. Some responsibilities trainers have are caring for the animals' physical needs, as well as teaching them good behaviors and/or coaching them for events, which ...

and politician in Hong Kong.

Horse training career

An émigré to the United Kingdom in 1952 who worked in a

Chinese restaurant A Chinese restaurant is a restaurant that serves Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese style, due to the history of the Overseas Chinese, Chinese diaspora, though other Chinese regional cuisine, regional cuisin ...

near

Epsom Downs Racecourse Epsom Downs is a Grade 1 racecourse in a hilly area near Epsom in Surrey, England which is used for thoroughbred horse racing. The "Downs" referred to in the name are part of the North Downs. The course has a crowd capacity of 130,000 including ...

, Kan found a job as a groom in a horse stable through jockey Teith Tugan and obtained a diploma in

horse management There are many aspects to horse management. Horses, pony, ponies, mules, donkeys and other domestication of the horse, domesticated Equus (genus), equids require attention from humans for optimal health and long life. Living environment Horses ...

. Kan returned to Hong Kong in 1969 and joined the

Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) was founded in 1884 and is one of the oldest institutions in Hong Kong. In 1960, it was granted a royal charter and renamed The Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club (). The institution reverted to its original name in 19 ...

(as it was then known) as an assistant trainer. He was granted a trainer's licence in the 1978–79 season and had since trained a Hong Kong record of over 830 winners and the winners of 100 cup races until his retirement in 2005. He was five-time champion of 1986–87‚ 1987–88‚ 1988–89‚ 1989–90‚ 2000–01 and his best season was 63 winners in 1989–90. He won the very first

Hong Kong Cup The Hong Kong Cup is a Conditions races, Group 1 Flat racing, flat Horse racing, horse race in Hong Kong which is open to thoroughbreds aged three years or older. It is run over a distance of 2000 metres (about miles or 10 furlongs) at Sha Tin Ra ...

in 1987–88 with

Flying Dancer Flying Dancer (foaled 1982 in New Zealand) was a Thoroughbred racehorse who competed in Hong Kong. Sired by Ballybrit, a descendant of the British champion Polymelus, he was out of the mare Pur Sang who was from the British Hyperion line. Owned ...

. He also trained five

Hong Kong Derby The Hong Kong Derby is a Hong Kong Thoroughbred horse race held annually since 1873. Restricted to horses four-years-old only since 1981, the race is run in mid-March and is the premier event on the domestic racing programme with a purse of HK$18 m ...

winners (most recently

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in 2001) and the winner of the 2000 Audemars Piguet

Queen Elizabeth II Cup The Queen Elizabeth II Cup is a Group One Thoroughbred horse race at Sha Tin Racecourse in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Established in 1975 by the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, it is run annually in April over a distance of 2,000 metres (te ...

‚

Industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

. Kan relocated to

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in 2003-04 season and trained 267 winners until he resigned in 2012.

Political career

Kan was an indigenous inhabitant (

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...

) born in

Sheung Shui Sheung Shui (, literally "Above-water") is an area in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Sheung Shui Town, a part of this area, is part of the Fanling–Sheung Shui New Town in the North District, Hong Kong, North District of Hong Kong. Fanli ...

in northern

New Territories The New Territories (N.T., Traditional Chinese characters, Chinese: ) is one of the three areas of Hong Kong, alongside Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. It makes up 86.2% of Hong Kong's territory, and contains around half of the population of H ...

. He participated in rural politics and was a member of the Provisional Regional Council from 1997 to 1999, the

North District Council The North District Council () is one of the 18 district council of Hong Kong, Hong Kong district councils and represents the North District, Hong Kong, North District. It is one of 18 such councils. Consisting of 24 members, the district council ...

from 2000 to 2004, and the

Election Committee The Election Committee is the electoral college in Hong Kong that selects the Chief Executive (CE) and, since 2021, elects 40 of the 90 members of the Legislative Council. Established by Annex I of the Basic Law of Hong Kong which states ...

from 2000 to 2006 as the representative of the Sheung Shui Rural Committee and the

Heung Yee Kuk The Heung Yee Kuk, officially the Heung Yee Kuk N.T., is a statutory advisory body representing establishment interests in the New Territories, Hong Kong. The council is a powerful organisation comprising heads of rural committees which repre ...

. He ran for the

Legislative Council A legislative council is the legislature, or one of the legislative chambers, of a nation, colony, or subnational division such as a province or state. It was commonly used to label unicameral or upper house legislative bodies in the Brit ...

elections in

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

, and

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

but was not elected.

Football management

Kan was the president of

Double Flower FA Double Flower Football Association () is a Hong Kong football club which plays in the Hong Kong Third Division. The club was very successful in 1990s in the then top-tier First Division under the name Instant-Dict (). Major events * 1981–82 ...

from 1986 to 1988. In the autumn of 1987 he was arrested on suspicion of

match-fixing In organized sports, match fixing (also known as game fixing, race fixing, throwing, rigging, hippodroming, or more generally sports fixing) is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a predetermined result, v ...

after the

Hong Kong Football Club Hong Kong Football Club (HKFC; ), established in 1886, is a private members' club in Hong Kong. The name reflects the origin as a club for playing association football and Rugby football, rugby. The club is situated in Happy Valley, Hong Kon ...

filed a complaint with the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) against his club alleging

. He was later released without charge.

Criminal convictions

On 28 February 1989, Kan was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault on his Filipino domestic helper and was fined HK$5,000 by the

Shatin Sha Tin, also spelt Shatin, is a neighbourhood along Shing Mun River in the eastern New Territories, Hong Kong. Administratively, it is part of the Sha Tin District. Sha Tin is one of the neighbourhoods of the Sha Tin New Town project. The ne ...

Magistrates' Court A magistrates' court is a lower court where, in several Jurisdiction (area), jurisdictions, all criminal proceedings start. Also some civil matters may be dealt with here, such as family proceedings. Courts * Magistrates' court (England and Wales) ...

for each count (HK$25,000 in total). The magistrate did not impose a custodial sentence on Kan having regard to his contributions to the community and the impact of the case already on him. Kan was charged in November 2011 with electoral corruption in the village representative election in 2011. Kan offered HK$130,000 to a village representative, who owned a grocery store, to vote for him as Sheung Shui Rural Committee chairman, which carries ex-officio membership of the

. Although he claimed that he was not aware of the contents in the envelope he left in the grocery store, the judge did not believe his side of the story and found him guilty of the offence. He was sentenced to 3.5 months' imprisonment which was increased to 12 months in October 2013 upon appeal by the prosecution. Kan was ordered to return to prison to serve the additional sentence after completing his original one.

Death

Kan died at his home in Sheung Shui, on 12 February 2022, at the age of 84.

References