When Rich Tapestry won at Santa Anita in the early hours of Sunday morning, he not only flew the flag for “drug-free racing” around the world but started a Twitter storm dubbed “all-weather gate” by one pundit, as some US form students were left stunned by the pioneering performance – thought to be his first on a dirt surface.

Like it or loathe it, the inner track at Sha Tin is called the all-weather track (AWT). Its name is a misnomer in more ways than one.

Like it or loathe, it the inner track at Sha Tin is called the all-weather track (AWT). Its name is a misnomer in more ways than one.

Firstly, the track takes to water about as well as your average Persian house cat, but more importantly, “all-weather” usually means artificial in other jurisdictions, but there’s nothing artificial about the AWT at Sha Tin – it’s just plain old dirt.

So while Rich Tapestry didn’t have “first-time Lasix” next to his name in the race book, in at least some guides he did have “first time dirt” noted, leaving US punters stung as the Michael Chang Chun-wai sprinter went around as an unwanted 7.4-1 outsider in a five-horse field, and leaving some red-faced broadcasters – and we will use their own words here – “with dirt on their face”.

One misconception in the whole “Rich Tapestry banned from using Lasix” debate was that Chang wanted to head to the US so he could use the controversial drug on his horse, who is a bleeder, whereas he actually flew stateside primarily because he believed the horse could win with or without the drug.

The thing is, Rich Tapestry is a freak on the dirt, but the name “all-weather track” gave the impression of an artificial surface – like the Tapeta of Meydan, on which the horse was triumphant earlier this year. Well, the Sha Tin “all-weather track” – object of scorn for our own Alan Aitken, who once tweeted that he would rather shoot heroin than bet on races held on it – is actually more American than apple pie, a good ol’ dirt track just like the ones dotted around the US of A, and Rich Tapestry was two from two on it.

This, straight from what would have been a thrilling Hong Kong Jockey Club press briefing in 2005, held on what must have been the slowest of all slow news days: “Commonly known as the ‘all-weather’, the track is in fact an American-designed dirt surface consisting of sand, silt, clay and organic elements.”

So, why is it called “all-weather” anything? Who knows, other than everybody has to use it no matter what – rain, hail or shine – because there is no other option.

(Something to consider when tearing into the AWT: it’s primarily a training track and if it was to ever to become unusable for any significant amount of time it would be a financial disaster. Horses couldn’t be trained and there would be no racing. It might be the most important track in Hong Kong).

But back to Sunday’s landmark win.

Before jumping in the Grade One Santa Anita Sprint Championship the commentary team on HRTV came up with three puzzling claims.

The first was that Olivier Doleuze might be lacking for experience on the dirt track, the second was that Rich Tapestry would be lacking in gate speed compared to his four rivals and would be left “eating dirt”, but the biggie was that this was Rich Tapestry’s first try away from turf and artificial surfaces.

The last one was clearly based on misinformation printed somewhere, but the commentary didn’t do much to dissuade some of the view that some Americans can’t look beyond their own backyard when it comes to anything – let alone form.

Not only do our American friends need to know that Olivier Doleuze is the coolest man on the planet – like a small French cross between Chuck Norris and George Clooney, with impeccable dress sense and fabulous, colour coordinated riding gear – but he is the “king of the dirt” when it comes to racing at Sha Tin. His strike rate of 13 per cent on the dirt is considerably higher than the 9 per cent from his last 1,000 turf rides.

A basic YouTube search of Rich Tapestry would have put the kibosh on the “no gate speed” claim, and revealed a win in the Group Three Mahab Al Shimaal at Meydan, where his blistering gate speed saw him easily bounce into the box seat.

On Sunday at Santa Anita, after jumping as good as anything, Doleuze looked left and right and opted out of the cut-throat four-horse speed battle for the front.

Speed-obsessed Americans might “ping the lids” better than anyone, but watch this and tell me Rich Tapestry can’t take up a position.

Prolific blogger Sid Fernando (@sidfernando) was on a highly entertaining Twitter rampage post-race, putting his investigative skills to use to get to the bottom of “all-weather gate”.

We wonder whether the win could open the floodgates for more Hong Kong horses to head abroad, as Rich Tapestry might not even be the best dirt tracker in town.

Sean Woods-trained nut job Lord Sinclair smashed the 1,200m AWT record last season, and the horse that beat him last start, Access Years, clearly flies on the dirt, too. And that’s not including the actual top-rated sprinters who don’t get a chance to race on the much-derided track, including Sterling City, who was able to beat Rich Tapestry on the Tapeta.

With the Tapeta track now bagged up by Sheikh Mohammed and being sold as kitty litter at Emirates Mall, Dubai has its own dirt track and a US$2 million sprint like the Golden Shaheen must be an appealing target to some.

Conspiracy theorists might speculate the “first time dirt” and misinformation was a Hong Kong ruse to get top odds. Whatever the case, Rich Tapestry won’t sneak under anybody’s guard at Santa Anita on November 1, nor will any Hong Kong sprinter aimed at a dirt race in future.

To save further confusion, maybe we can get the “all-weather track” renamed the “Rich Tapestry Raceway” for now.

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