THE studious indifference and occasional open hostility of some in horse racing towards anything which happens outside their own backyard is odd to behold. It is difficult to imagine self-professed “fans” of, say, rugby union or football being so proudly ignorant of the merit of the All Blacks or of the skills of Messi, for instance.

But such parochialism is what regularly crops up when some of the bigger international events and horses come round. The fact that all four Group 1s at last weekend’s Hong Kong International Meeting at Sha Tin were won by locally-trained horses might be seen by some as justification for disregarding the event altogether.