This column has long been a supporter of the Jockey Club's programme of overseas education for young local jockeys, especially those at the very beginning of their careers.
Despite groundless objections from within Hong Kong racing when the programme was in its infancy, the club pressed on and was right to do so. Initial experience gained by apprentice riders in six-horse fields at low-class, low-pressure meetings in the countryside of Australia is an ideal introduction to race riding.
But the comments of Gerald Mosse on Sunday after an incident involving a 10-pound claimer - and he is not the only accomplished rider in Hong Kong to hold these views, merely the one to have made them public - clearly show that the Club now must examine a second stage for its young, home-grown riders before they come home to ride.
A platform of limited experience in minor events in Australia is an early foundation for a riding career in big fields against top-grade talents in Hong Kong but it is not the whole foundation.
In answer to Mosse, chief steward Jamie Stier has asserted that these boys need to learn their craft and both are correct.
These apprentices are somewhat better prepared for race riding in Hong Kong after their hundred or so rides in Australia, but they are not fully prepared. Somewhere, the Club needs to find a stepping stone in the middle with fuller fields and higher intensity than the Australian bush without dropping the lads immediately into the pressures and intensity of Hong Kong.
