Welcome to the future, folks. It's called the World Thoroughbred Championships and it's going to change the way you look at this horseracing lark forever.

Sure, the bare concept might look the same: still known as the Breeders' Cup, still just eight races on a single night and still being held in the US. All of which just proves appearances can be deceptive.

Just as the world will never be the same again after the September 11th atrocity, racing's silly, uptight and insular little bubble is evolving before our very eyes in New York's first major international sporting event since the terrorist attacks.

Even the Yanks can see the seeds of evolution and some of these Maryland and Kentucky hardboots can recognise bullshit downwind through a fog. Especially some of that prime Eur'peen bullshit.

They've had plenty of practice after all. Every one of the past 17 years has seen a posse of blue-blooded champions from this side of the pond being turned into chumps on t'other. It's got boring. Every year the excuses get more convoluted and the home response more maddeningly charitable.

But at Belmont tonight, probably the most competitive team ever sent from these shores will go into action with very different terms of engagement.

Better horses than Galileo and Sakhee have performed Fatty Arbuckle-type belly flops in the Breeders' Cup. But the likes of Dancing Brave, Zilzal, etc, had their defining moments long before clumping tiredly on to the plane.

This time there is so much deliberately riding on the outcome of these eight races that their significance can hardly be overstated. John Magnier and Sheikh Mohammed know it more than anyone.

The two most powerful men in world racing may have different reasons for focusing their attention on America, but both can recognise pay dirt when they see it.

Which is why this Breeders' Cup is not some last gasp at the saloon before a jaded star retires to the boudoir. Magnier and the Sheikh have deliberately and carefully prepared their top horses for months with tonight in mind, filled their thoughts with sand, split times and kickback.

Who knows where it might end? Slap my face and call me HG if in a few years we might not see Aidan O'Brien's training routine spanning different barns that are thousands of miles apart, a la Wayne Lukas or Bob Baffert: Calder in winter and the Curragh for a fortnight in June! It might not be as crazy as it sounds. After all, Magnier seems to have turned west with a vengeance, and where Magnier goes, the rest tend to have to follow.

"Sheikh Mohammed managed to attract quite a lot of mares from the US to Britain for Dubai Millennium before that stallion died. The horse had won the Dubai World Cup on dirt and I think Magnier can see himself doing something similar in Ireland," says the Racing Post's noted bloodstock expert, Tony Morris.

The key to such a plan would be proven ability to run on dirt and open up the vast American market which still offers more money than anywhere else in the world. Thus, there was the quite considerable consolation from Giant's Causeway's narrow Classic defeat last year that the colt had indicated his potential to the always sceptical Americans.

"His fee in Ireland had been announced before the Classic. After he finished second in the Breeders' Cup it went up, and now he is over in the States where he will cover the best part of 200 mares," says Morris.

"Everything John Magnier does is for commercial reasons, so success in America is very important. The American market is always stronger than here, there are more people with money to spend and Magnier has a huge farm there already," Morris adds.

Thus we have Galileo, Europe's top three-year-old colt, with a pedigree that contains a mud-loving Arc de Triomphe winning mother, plus a father who specialises in mile and a half horses that like a cut in the ground. No Arc or Turf for him though: nope, it's the Classic or bust.

"I know it has already been said that Galileo will stand as a stallion in Ireland but if he wins, or runs well on Saturday, it will be no surprise if the same thing that happened to Giant's Causeway doesn't happen again," Morris says.

So, we have the most powerful man currently in world racing committing his very best horses, Galileo, Mozart, Johannesburg, division leaders all, to the Breeders' Cup. And what does his main competitor do? Why, exactly the same.

Sheikh Mohammed's commitment to beating the best in the States has been constant for some years. His best three-year-olds have been committed to fruitless attacks on the Kentucky Derby but that hasn't stopped him setting up a specialist American barn to keep trying.

It's that desire to beat the Americans at their own game, possibly more than anything else, that has caused the dramatic switch of Sakhee and Fantastic Light.

"The boss said to me that Fantastic Light could have run second in the Classic whereas Sakhee might win it," explained the Godolphin spokesman, Simon Crisford.

The result is a series of races that come as close to justifying the "World Thoroughbred Championships" tag as makes no difference. Certainly it's a more realistic idea than the Emirates World Series which takes Formula One motor racing as its model.

This is more Micheal Johnson than Michael Schumacher, more Coe than Coulthard, and in an environment that even the most casual of the millions watching worldwide on TV can understand: the gates open, the horses run like crazy and the fastest wins.

No get-outs about not acting on the track, or hitting a false patch of ground, or being over the top, middle or bottom. These horses, the best in the world, have been trained for today and the result will be horse racing at its most rarefied, but also at its purest.

Every race is about finding the fastest and identifying the best. The World Thoroughbred Championships are becoming the ultimate in that process. And for once, even the home team acknowledge this isn't going to be an all-American show.

Belmont is one of the most European of racetracks in terms of its size, the New York climate is as close to ours as makes no difference and after 17 years, the top trainers on this side of the pond seem to be getting the hang of this travelling lark.

But it's more than that. With Point Given retired and Tiznow apparently fading, there is a general consensus the American horses in the Classic are not up to strength. And if the Yanks admit that, then there really is a gap to be filled. All it will take is for Galileo, Sakhee or maybe even Black Minnaloushe to fill it and who knows how small this racing world could become.