'I don't think we've ever taken horses away and not picked up something,' says England's veteran world traveller
International racing might seem to be a new pursuit to many racing fans, but English trainer Clive Brittain was there when the dawn broke on it almost two decades ago.
'It's a piece of cake these days,' Brittain sparkled yesterday as he saw his Hong Kong Vase runner, Warrsan, go through his paces.
The trainer turns 70 on Monday but still rides out on four horses a morning at home, and was one of the early voyagers in the early to mid-1980s, winning a Japan Cup with Jupiter Island, a Breeders' Cup with Pebbles and finishing second in the Kentucky Derby.
Brittain was also in the vanguard as Europeans trekked to Australia for the first time on hit-and-run missions in Sydney in the same decade, finishing second in the Tancred International at Rosehill and he was one of the first to make tracks to Sha Tin's showpiece.
'If you ask me the reason we did it then when it was so much more difficult - the answer is money,' Brittain laughs, and the reasons haven't changed a lot even if the manner of the task has.
'The travel was not as easy then, but much of the change had to do with the quarantine. In Australia, Les Benton was the one who made the Melbourne Cup take off for Europeans in the 1990s. I had met Les and told him there was no way he would get horses there unless they could work on the quarantine problems and, to his credit, he pushed for changes that have made the race such a success now.
