THE local horses might have lost their grip on the International Sprint, but for Hong Kong Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, that was one of the best things to come out of Sunday's unofficial turf world championships, reports The Age. It says: ''It shows it's a real international meeting. Since 2001 we had dominated the sprint and, medium term, I think [losing] is good,'' Engelbrecht-Bresges said. ''You can come from anywhere in the world and be successful here and for us

THE local horses might have lost their grip on the International Sprint, but for Hong Kong Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, that was one of the best things to come out of Sunday's unofficial turf world championships, reports The Age.

It says: ''It shows it's a real international meeting. Since 2001 we had dominated the sprint and, medium term, I think [losing] is good,'' Engelbrecht-Bresges said. ''You can come from anywhere in the world and be successful here and for us that is the biggest compliment.''

With sprint winner J J The Jet Plane coming from South Africa and the other three group 1 winners from England, United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong, the meeting was truly international. However, Engelbrecht-Bresges admitted that plenty of work needed to be done to attract more runners from Australia, with mare Ortensia the only representative this year. He said the two main obstacles were prizemoney - which, is recent years, has been affected by the rising Australian dollar - and the quarantine restrictions.

''We will look at prizemoney. In the end, what drives the engine is prizemoney so we will be looking to make that more attractive to the Australians,'' he said.

But he believes the real key would be changes to the quarantine requirements.

''I think long term we have to convince governments that there should be special export protocols for Olympic horses and world-class racehorses, which would enable horses from Australia to come to Hong Kong a lot easier and that is something we have to work on,'' he said. ''The [disease] risk comes from horses on stud farms in contact with a lot of other horses. Racehorses are the best-monitored athletes in the world. When you see the vet bills for racehorses you would think the vet lives with the horses.''