On the one hand, Joy And Fun's well-deserved Group One victory on the weekend reiterated one of the positives in our top-grade racing scene here but, on the other, the same evidence served to highlight the current transition period for Hong Kong's sprinters.
Albeit with Entrapment absent, Joy And Fun managed to beat the top sprinters around as an eight-year-old, with a nine-year-old, Sunny King, in third.
On similar occasions, it has been worthwhile wheeling out the observation that the scarcity of top-class races in Hong Kong does help to preserve the A-graders for longer than other jurisdictions, where opportunities abound to run them more often.
Less wear and tear and you have them until they are seven or eight, or nine in Sunny King's case. It has been a blessing through the seasons for local champions like River Verdon, Indigenous, Oriental Express, Electronic Unicorn, Viva Pataca and Good Ba Ba to race on, and still effectively, to a ripe age.
Joy And Fun hardly qualifies under the less wear and tear heading, though - a fractured wither in 2007 and a fractured cannon in 2010 were injuries that could have ended a career at either moment but Joy And Fun has still managed 52 starts since his debut in October 2006, including trips to Dubai, Singapore and England. That's probably enough of a workload to not consider him under-used.
For much of his career considered a 1,400-metre horse who just about stretched to a mile, rather than a short-course sprinter, Joy And Fun is a tough, talented horse and a fine comeback yarn.
But his victory does still ask a few questions of the younger sprinters that an eight-year-old is still going well enough to lay claim to being as good as we have.