It's crunchtime for the big names - well, sort of...

Sunday's Jockey Club race meeting was born of the local selection process for Longines Hong Kong International Race (HKIR) meeting after the turn of the century, but in 2025 it isn't totally overstating things to suggest this looks more like a fork in the road for some of the biggest Hong Kong names as they prepare for the actual main event in three weeks.

Until 2002, Hong Kong's selection of international runners was patchy and, at times, a little controversial.

The Hong Kong Sprint runners were plucked from a number of races, though the International Sprint Trial was regarded as the main proving ground, despite being a handicap.

I have no anti-handicap bias that you see in some old world jurisdictions, but it's in the nature of handicap racing that, at times, the weights will decide the race for the lesser horse over the more heavily-burdened better-performed horse.

The lesser horse then had a cogent argument to be included in the international races, despite a far less advantageous set of race conditions and that did produce its share of arguments and disappointments.

Likewise, the Hong Kong Mile runners had the Chevalier Cup, another handicap, as the testing ground for HKIR. That allowed for a star like Electronic Unicorn in 2001 to produce a memorable win, conceding at least 15 pounds to every runner in a high class field, but carried the same issues as the Sprint Trial when it came to the selection of international runners which had performed with light weights.

The Hong Kong Cup didn't even have a designated race - the local representatives came from a hodge podge of races like the Ladies' Purse, Pok Oi Cup or Chevalier Cup - all handicaps.

So, in 2002, the club introduced designated races as lead-ups and a proving ground for international day - the Jockey Club Cup, Sprint and Mile - and run at set weights conditions but with a relatively-minor weight allowance of 5 pounds for horses which had not won a G1 in the prior year.

It was a format which offered a comfortable preparation for the established stars but some assistance as a stepping stone to the up-and-comers and it virtually ended all arguments about who should or should not represent Hong Kong on international day.

When the races were thrown open for international visitors, local trainers protested, saying the visitors would muddy the selection waters but they needn't have worried - a local run before the main event proved an unpopular option and very few foreign horses have ever contested these trial events.

Singapore sprinters were the most frequent visitors - Rocket Man (2010) dead-heated in the Jockey Club Sprint before a narrow defeat on international day, while Super Easy (2012) and Spalato (2014) finished down the track in both and Australia's Scenic Blast turned up for the the same race in 2009 but was scratched from the Jockey Club Sprint and never made it to the main event. Japan's Hana's Goal was a distant ninth in the Jockey Club Mile in 2014, before doing better with an eight on international day.

The 2008 Hong Kong Cup winner for Mike de Kock, Eagle Mountain finished ninth in the 2009 Jockey Club Mile on his way to fifth in the Hong Kong Cup that year.

So this is where we are on Sunday at Sha Tin, three G2 races at set weights, with allowances, and not the scariest assignment for the best horses but a necessary race against those who would be the pretenders. And often a better contest than many expected - that apparently minor weight allowance makes a difference and the lesser lights with the allowance have always punched well above their weight, so to speak.

The G2 set weights races on Sunday are not the only races of this kind - there are also two in the Hong Kong spring, leading into Champions Day - but there are just five of them all season and this table shows the performances of the horses with different weights.

The established G1 performers have won 29.4 % of the time - not even up to the standard performance of a betting favourite in Hong Kong racing - and fallen badly short of betting expectations, winning almost six fewer times than expected.

So, it might all look straightforward when they are names on a page with a list of past achievements, but when they are flesh and blood and heaving lungs on the track, it isn't always quite as simple.

Which brings us to Sunday.

Just over a week ago, James McDonald had barely landed in Hong Kong to start a 6-week riding stint when he was out partnering Romantic Warrior through the trackwork darkness in a critical turf gallop.

Hong Kong's racehorses do not often have the racecourse itself for morning exercise but, at certain times, in the lead-up to major events, the Jockey Club will give permission for the top liners to step out on the manicured grass of Sha Tin's main track. This was such a morning.

After toweling up ownermate/stablemate Romantic Thor with a minimum of exertion, Romantic Warrior returned to trainer Danny Shum and his staff carrying a delighted McDonald.

“I jumped out of bed pretty quickly this morning, that was for sure. He was my first ride and he just looks phenomenal – he’s prepping up nicely," McDonald told the press. "He feels every bit as good as what he’s worked like in the past. He looks fantastic. It will take a good one to beat him."

And that's great news for the globetrotter, who was eclipse by the youngster Ka Ying Rising for Horse Of The Year honours at the end of last season but still clung to hos Most Popular Horse title - voted by the public - for the second year running.

On Sunday, he is first-up in the Jockey Club Cup, 2,000m, since his narrow defeat at the hands - hooves - of Japan's Soul Rush in the Dubai Turf.

Under normal circumstances, Romantic Warrior would have returned from that to contest a race like the QE II Cup or Champions & Chater Cup at home but, in May, he was reported with a near front fetlock injury which required surgery.

That's why Sunday is so crucial. Romantic Warrior's only defeat at the first run of any campaign came in Melbourne, a terrific run under trying circumstances when fourth in the Turnbull Stakes before his Cox Plate win.

But time and tide wait for no-one, Romantic Warrior is within touching distance of turning eight years old - officially, though his actual birthday is on March 18 - and Sunday will see him return from an injury for the first time in his dazzling career. So, while all the signs are good in the cool mornings and bustling stables, there is a sense of something to be proved on race day at a time in any horse's career when the job becomes more difficult.

Standing in his way is Voyage Bubble, winner of an historic Triple Crown last season - the first to do it in over 30 years - whose emergence has come, at least in part due to the retirement of Golden Sixty and the absence overseas of Romantic Warrior.

Voyage Bubble has also looked good at the trials following a sobering first-up twelfth in the G2 Sha Tin Trophy, under handicap conditions, behind My Wish, the horse many are looking at to inherit the tag of Hong Kong's best miler. At seven years old, The Bubble is no longer a youngster either, but, between these two ageing star, 29 wins and over $HK 321 million in prizemoney towers over their younger rivals on Sunday and brings a certain amount of expectation.

The Jockey Club Mile doesn't have an established superstar but some admirable G1 also-rans, including Red Lion who surprised, even shocked, when he turned over Voyage Bubble in the G1 Champions Mile last season, Galaxy Patch, who has never quite become the horse we all expected him to be, and the aspiring My Wish.

The best of a still to be proven classic bunch last season, My Wish is unbeaten in two starts in the new term under handicap conditions and has that new kid on the block look to him as Hong Kong looks for a new mile champion - a sector where it has long provided greats like Fairy King Prawn, Electronic Unicorn, Bullish Luck, Good Ba Ba, Able Friend, Beauty Generation, Golden Sixty and Voyage Bubble. He has some way to go before he looks like he belongs in that group but Sunday is his next step and it's new boys all round - his trainer Mark Newnham is starting to make a serious impact after two season in Hong Kong, now leading the championship, and David Eustace, with only one HK training season under his belt, will send out the other up and comer in the Jockey Club Mile, Light Years Charm.

Meanwhile, the Jockey Club Sprint has the right look to it - David Hayes-trained Ka Ying Rising now seven more wins and an Everest down the road from Zac Purton's finger-pointing blitz in the same race in 2024, with the 5-pound allowance, that convinced the world he was its champion.

In a different blog on this site, I've noted the mixed bag of performances for Hong Kong's winners overseas when they returned home, but Ka Ying Rising returns from The Everest in the prime of his life as a new five-year-old and could not have looked more comfortable winning a trial on November 14.

Even his constant shadow, Helios Express, the horse who had looked the most likely, if still unlikely, local sprinter to beat him emerged from that trial with a lot more questions to answer than Ka Ying Rising after being beaten 27 lengths.

Another former star, once the world's best sprinter Lucky Sweynesse is looking for a resurrection in Sunday's event too, after chasing home Ka Ying Rising in the Chief Executive's Cup prior to a flop in Japan's Sprinters Stakes.

At seven and with injury woes over the past couple of years since he was the Ka Ying Rising of his day, Lucky Sweynesse will be looking to prove he still have something to offer.

Meanwhile, a Hayes stablemate with an interesting back story, Tomodachi Kokoroe, has emerged as a potential player - at least in the chasing pack behind Ka Ying Rising - with three unbeaten starts this season as a seven year old himself.

Tomodachi Kokoroe's career began with three starts in Victoria for one modest provincial placing, enough to see him packed off to the Siberia of Australian racing in North Queensland, where he won six from six at dubious venues like Cairns and Townsville.

He took some time to get going in Hong Kong but, with a last-start G2 handicap win on the board, he no longer looks out of place competing at a high level.

Horse racing is always awaiting what you do next, not what your highlight reel looks like, and for Hong Kong's champions, past and present, and any others who would be king, that's what Sunday is about.