When we leave the Cathay Pacific International Races each year, with feelings of privilege and euphoria at having witnessed a great day of entertainment and world-class horse-racing, we always seem to believe 'it can't get any better than this'. But somehow, 12 months later, it does - almost magically.
This year the good ship CXHKIR looked like floundering on a reef called equine influenza. With the dreaded 'horse flu' hitting Japan and Australia simultaneously a few months back, the potential damage of a knock-on effect for Hong Kong was very real. But it's a great credit to the significance of this event on the international horse-racing calendar that the 2007 Cathay Pacific International Races might even surpass any that have gone before it.
Hong Kong has become an increasingly potent force at these end-of-year 'turf world championships'. The word 'great' used to be appropriate for just two horses, River Verdon and Co-Tack, but in the era of international racing we now have a gaggle of Hong Kong stars having been thoroughly tried and tested on the world stage.
Fairy King Prawn, Silent Witness, Cape of Good Hope, Bullish Luck and Vengeance of Rain have all travelled abroad and succeeded at Group One level in the past decade, bringing so much honour to the city they called home. But there is an even longer list of our Sha Tin-based champs who have repelled the 'best of the best' at the international races, most notably back in 2002 when our frontline horses won three of the four features on racing's day of days.
This year, the opposition is more serious than ever. Europe's Horse of the Year, Dylan Thomas is here for the Hong Kong Vase and he just happens to be the highest-rated horse in the world at the present time. If it's a big name you want, search no more, they come no bigger than Dylan.
Then there is Miss Andretti, who less than two weeks ago was crowned Australian Horse of the Year with a huge majority. She's medium-sized, and maybe a bit plain, but there's a Formula One engine idling under that streetcar exterior and on 19 occasions - 18 in Australia and one unforgettable moment in England - she's made her rivals pay dearly for any lack of respect.
Miss Andretti is here for the HK$12million Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint. She'll come up against a young local buck called Sacred Kingdom, but he might learn the hard way there's very little the Aussie Miss considers sacred. That pair, and the reigning titleholder Absolute Champion will do battle over 1,200 metres and it will be a race for the ages.
