The headline result from Friday's Chinese New Year meeting was the breakthrough feature wins of My Wish for sophomore trainer Mark Newnham and jockey Luke Ferraris.
My Wish landing a prestigious leg of the 4yo series provides a public focus highlight but Newnham's second Hong Kong season has been brilliant by any metric.
He sits in a close joint-fourth on the trainers' premiership, marginally leads it on strike rate and is well ahead of the market expectations in the results he is producing. Newnham's season has been so good that many are wondering aloud if he is a genuine contender for the trainers' championship this season.
And just as bright a star has been Ferraris, the South African who only turned 23 at the end of December but is already in the his fourth season in the pressure cooker environment of Hong Kong and has pushed into the top four on the roster.
Luke Ferraris grew up at Sha Tin during the years when his father David was a trainer based there, returning to South Africa as a teenager to fulfill his dream of becoming a jockey. After two apprentice championships and six Group One wins working under his legendary trainer grandfather, Ormond Ferraris, Luke was was Hong Kong's youngest-ever licensee when he arrived in 2021.
There are arguments to be had over whether having his father training in Hong Kong at the same time was a help or hindrance to the young jockey in the murky background politics of the closed environment.
Though Ferraris senior departed four months later, there are still yards where the rider struggles to get any traction, but he battled manfully in his first two seasons, before teaming successfully with Newnham in 2023-24, when the trainer was still working out his new workplace.
As Newnham has burst through this campaign, so has Ferraris, each providing each other with more than 40 per cent of their wins. Each of them is outperforming market expectations but their strike rate is best in combination.
They have become a powerful team in the rank and file races and now Ferraris is the second-youngest Classic Mile winning rider, behind only Englishman Darryll Holland, who was four months short of his 23rd birthday when he won on Bogie's Pride in 1995.
But, away from the glare of highly sought-after Classic Mile, the Lunar New Year team of Newnham and Ferraris produced a win that may be even more consequential, perhaps part of a re-emergence of South Africa in Hong Kong racing.
It goes almost without saying that South African riders have been a giant part of Hong Kong since Bart Leisher broke the ice, winning the 1988 championship.
Basil Marcus won the title seven times in the 1990s, Robbie Fradd in 2000 before the never-to-be-repeated Douglas Whyte reign of 13 consecutive title. And that overlooks the massive contributions made by Felix Coetzee, Weichong Marwing, Anton Marcus, Pier Strydom many and others, including Anthony Delpech, who won the then-world's richest turf race for Hong Kong with David Ferraris-trained Vengeance Of Rain in Dubai.
Since Whyte switched to training in 2020, the South African influence in the saddle has been present but less influential, with a couple of false dawns for the likes of Aldo Domeyer and particularly Grant Van Niekerk, but Lyle Hewitson pushed his way into Hong Kong's upper echelons last term and he and Ferraris look long-term players.
The story hasn't been as bright in the training ranks.
We've seen the departure of David Ferraris and more recently, Ambitious Dragon's trainer, Tony Millard, leaving Whyte the sole representative from South Africa - a very loosely-applied tag all the same for a man who has never had a runner in that country.
That is about to change. After Hong Kong Jockey Club discussions with Mike De Kock and, more recently, Justin Snaith, both of which didn't proceed when some details were not quite right, I believe that the club is about to announce South Africa's 29-time Group One winning trainer, Brett Crawford as the next expatriate to join the Hong Kong list.
Licensing of trainers in Hong Kong often carries an alternative purpose, other than the obvious requirement of the Jockey Club to enlist talented horsemen, and it is about encouraging diversity in the Hong Kong horse population.
While horses from Australia and New Zealand dominate, with about 75 per cent of the Hong Kong population, that concentration has never been seen as desirable by the club management, which wants to see more of a cross section of the racing world's bloodlines.
Part of the background to David Eustace being licensed this season was his close ties to racing in Great Britain and the likely sourcing of horses from there as well as from his recent, adopted home of Australia.
South African jockeys and trainers have held an obvious place of honour in Hong Kong over many years but South African horses - other than the fly-in visitors who have removed international Group Ones, like London News, Irridescence and Variety Club - have been relatively insignificant.
Millard won the Classic Cup and was runner-up in the Classic Mile and Derby with South African-bred Singapore Sling and he also imported three-time G3 winner Horse Of Fortune, but it has been a fairly short honour roll.
It has also been a minimal participation rate, with imports of South African horses heavily-handicapped by the African horse sickness. That didn't prevent Hong Kong owners buying them but did make the process so gruelling that few were willing to jump all the hoops.
That has changed recently, with a major vaccine breakthrough for the disease that should loosen the process and make South Africa a more valid, and cheaper, source for Hong Kong horses.
In recent years, some Hong Kong trainers and owners have increasingly looked to South America for a cheaper, quality alternative to Australasia, Great Britain and continental Europe, and there have been success stories like Champions & Chater Cup winner, Panfield (pictured) but South Africa looms as the next frontier.
The feats of De Kock and others internationally showcased how good the South African-breds can be so expect more Hong Kong runners with the SAF suffix in seasons ahead.
Crawford's licensing will be a part of that but, to bring our story full circle, the first shot might have been fired on Friday by the Newnham/Ferraris combination, just an hour after their big breakthrough with the nuggety Aussie-bred, My Wish.
Making his first appearance in Hong Kong, former South African gelding Mid Winter Wind brought some tidy, if unspectacular, three-year-old Group form from his homeland but his performance to take a 1200m Class 3 was exceptional.
He produced the day's best finishing speed under a big handicap and made himself an attractive shop window for owners who might be looking at South African-breds in the future.
On our Winning Factor ratings, the only four-year-old this season to have bettered Mid Winter Wind's 99 rating has been the super sprinter, Ka Ying Rising. In recent seasons, the one Class 3 winner to have hit 99 on our scale was Galaxy Patch as he moved through his classes - he is now an established Group One contender.
That's some rarefied air.
We expect a Group class future for Mid Winter Wind, too, and, intriguingly, he was tried up to 2000m in South Africa at three, so what his future holds in terms of a race like the Derby will be fascinating.
And just to tie it in a bow, one of the better-performed South African-breds in Hong Kong was the sprinter Cerise Cherry, who won the Chief Executive's Cup (and arguably should have won another one) and had the unenviable task in 2012 of leading home the chasing pack behind Lord Kanaloa in the HK Sprint.
Mid Winter Wind runs in the same ownership and colours.
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