Linton is the sole Australian entrant at Sha Tin in the big mile race next Saturday. Picture: Peter Wallis Source: Peter Wallis / News Limited
AUSTRALIAN trainers sneer at the supposed one-dimensional mindsets of their overseas contemporaries.
The view seems to be that the hyphenated Lords who train, the squires of Newmarket, prepare horses the same as their dad, who trained the same as his.
Yet it is these supposedly blinkered Europeans who are hopping around the world's premier race meets with their best horses, not the supposedly innovative and adventurous Australians.
Even Hong Kong, which is in our region, seems all a bit too hard for us when in fact it should be embraced as not just a challenge but an essential port of call.
It seems embarrassing that we are insular whereas we should be game.
If Peter Moody hadn't reluctantly accepted the Royal Ascot challenge with Black Caviar, her story would simply be a lesser one. Phar Lap was only immortal because he took on the Yanks and beat them.
At best we muster a trickle to the Hong Kong international races each December. Some years we don't have a runner at all to pit against the world's best.
At Sha Tin next Saturday Australia will be represented by Linton in the big mile race.
Last year it was Alcopop and Sea Siren.
In the decade before that, we were hardly there at all, besides a reasonable representation in the sprint.
Hong Kong's not easy, even if it is relatively close.
This year a vaccination hiccup affected nominations. Some horses, like Buffering last year, react poorly to the horse flu injections.
Quarantine - two weeks going in, two weeks going out - is also a greater hindrance to us than the Europeans.
But you wonder about our reluctance to flock to Hong Kong - and Dubai, and other hot spots - when you consider the almost casual ease of such trips for blokes like Ed Dunlop and Mikkel Delzangles.
In 2011 Dunaden skipped from his Melbourne Cup win to Hong Kong, where he won the Vase, then crammed in France, England, Flemington, Hong Kong, Dubai, then back to the UK, then Flemington, in a lucrative 18 months.
Red Cadeaux was nosed out by Dunaden at Flemington in 2011, ran third in Hong Kong, then ran in the UK, Japan (twice, six months apart), Hong Kong again (where he won), Dubai and Singapore.
Our big prizemoney is some reason to stay home and plunder but Dunaden and Red Cadeaux, who wouldn't earn two bob at home, have won $7 and $6 million worldwide.
These top class European based stayers are global gypsies, cherry picking the world's most lucrative prizes, no matter when they appear on the calendar.
Yet our trainers are shackled to a mindset that horses can peak only for one grand final per rigid campaign; five or six runs, the target, then an essential six weeks in the paddock. Some overseas horses have never seen a paddock.
The Europeans might think we complicate the training of these horses.
They seem to get them fit, hold that fitness, and plunder, much the same as human athletes who campaign year-round.
You have to wonder if it's our trainers who lack innovation, not theirs.
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