Horse of the Year honours riding on overseas 'tiebreaker'

With just the Champions & Chater remaining on this season's domestic Group One scene, the Horse of the Year honours look delicately poised and might be decided on foreign soil.

In our opinion, Ambitious Dragon is the best horse in action here and was a clear choice for the season's champion in 2010-11, but defeats out of the placings this term in the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Cup, Dubai Duty Free and BMW Champions Mile - his three headline assignments - have served to make his hold on the title somewhat slippery.

The five-year-old has won twice at Group One level in the Citibank Hong Kong Gold Cup and Stewards' Cup, but both are domestic races, and Lucky Nine has also won two Group Ones and one of those was an international event in the Hong Kong Sprint. Statistically speaking, that is entitled to give Caspar Fownes' sprinter-miler at least as strong a claim on the honours as Ambitious Dragon.

The Group One scene has been a mixed bag, with 12 different horses taking the 14 majors contested, and only these two horses have won more than once at elite level.

That is going to make it a tougher choice for some of the individual champion categories and when there are no real standouts in the categories, there can't be any overall.

However, international events with Hong Kong participants in Singapore, England and Japan are looming, and victory in any of them could make a strong case for Horse of the Year honours.