If veteran trainer Joe Lau can’t win Sunday’s Group Three Hong Kong Macau Trophy with The Alfonso then he at least hopes one of his fellow visitors can restore some pride to Macau racing after lean returns in recent interport events.

The Alfonso is one of five raiders to cross the Pearl River Delta to take on a particularly strong group of locals in the first leg of an annual two-race series that has become an increasingly one-sided affair.

“We haven’t done so well in the last few years so let’s hope we can bring back some of those glory days,” Lau said yesterday after visiting his five-year-old at Sha Tin.

“It is never easy bringing horses here to compete in Hong Kong, because they are of such good quality and the quality of Macau horses in the last five years has dropped off a bit. It’s a very important race to us, so it would be good for our horses to be competitive.”

It has now been six years since Viva Pronto’s famous upset win at triple-figure odds at Sha Tin and while a Macau-trained runner hasn’t been victorious in an interport race at home or away since, the trend at Sha Tin has been especially worrying.

Watch Viva Pronto win the 2010 Hong Kong Macau Trophy below

Just one Macanese competitor has placed at Sha Tin since 2010 and in the last three instalments of the race the best result from the away team is eighth.

Lau won the very first Hong Kong Macau Trophy at Sha Tin in 2004 with Crown’s Gift and completed a clean sweep with the same horse nearly two months later at home.

The Alfonso was a four-time winner for Chris Waller in Australia before moving to Macau last year and capturing Lau’s first Macau Derby win in April – a highlight for the handler after he had won most of the other feature races at Taipa during a decorated career.

Although Lau says his charge is “trained to the minute”, he fears the 1,400m trip might be on the short side for a horse that was impressive when winning the Group Two Winter Trophy over 1,700m last time out.

“Maybe he will find this a little bit short, sprinting is not his forte and he is better over a mile or 2,000m,” Lau said. “Still, I think he can run well, the horse looks in good order and I am happy with the way he has travelled.”

While it would appear fellow Macau-trained runners Master Of Puppets, 12th and 14th in the last two runnings of the race, and sand specialist Sheung Li Win will be out of their depth, perhaps four-year-olds Bobo So Cute and Valiant Soldier can be more of a threat in the HK$3 million race.