Champion Able Friend is now ranked the world’s top sprinter and has headed two different categories as Hong Kong’s elite horses and races again punched above their weight in 2015 in the official year-end summaries released in London on Tuesday night.

In the same lists last year, Hong Kong had a record 23 horses in the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings (WBRR) for 2014 and has held the same number of spots after the dust has cleared for the top class racing of 2015 when standards at the top have been assessed as higher.

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Able Friend made the top three in the world on last year’s list with an international mark of 127 but dropped to 125 this time, for both his Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup and Premier Bowl wins, and is now rated the joint fifth-best horse to have raced in 2015, behind American Pharoah (134), Golden Horn (130), Shared Belief and Treve (both 126).

Hong Kong’s Horse Of The Year didn’t lose his world champion miler title but does have to share it this year with his Queen Anne Stakes conqueror, Solow (125), but he takes over outright as the world’s champion sprinter. His 125 in winning first-up in the Premier Bowl places him ahead of Australia’s Chautaucqua and Lankan Rupee and the British Champions Sprint winner, Muhaarar, all jointly rated 123.

A peak performance with an international rating of 115 or better was needed to make it on to the list and 32 performances by 23 Hong Kong-trained horses have been listed, contesting races in four separate racing jurisdictions.

Only one of the winning efforts at the Sha Tin international meeting made the top ten this year, A Shin Hikari’s Hong Kong Cup coming in as the joint eighth-best performance in the world. The winning performances by Maurice in the Mile, Highland Reel in the Vase and Blazing Speed in the AP QE II Cup all making the top 30 but our sprinters were marked down, with Gold-Fun top rated at 120 for his Jockey Club Sprint and Peniaphobia (119) and Aerovelocity (118) coming in under him.

On the list of the world’s 100 best races in 2015, assessed according to the ratings of the first four over the line, only one Hong Kong event made the world’s top ten - the QE II Cup - but a remarkable seven of the top thirty last year were staged at Sha Tin and ten made the top hundred.