Panic set in with angry statements to the press about the criminal soliciting of European horses. Australia has since lost a Caulfield Cup to the British in a roughhouse race, but by and large the international horses that go to Australia each southern spring have uplifted the racing without lifting up the trophies. And you get the feeling sometimes that this is the preferred result. But the races are open to all and that's how they will stay because it's the reasonable attitude if Australians are going to compete elsewhere. And that is what Prawngate is actually about.
Japan has expensive racing and big stakes.
Towers of yen have been piled into making its breeding industry a blue-blood production line. Yet virtually all of this is inaccessible to an outside world where Japanese horses can pillage international races, star jockeys like Yutaka Take are free to participate and where Japanese can buy and race horses on every continent but Antarctica. In many parts of the racing world, administrators and participants believe the Japanese have a selfish view, double standards as Ivan Allan has said. There are now 16 flat and two jump races open to overseas entries. In the past decade, foreign jockeys have been licensed, albeit on a very limited basis.