Sports in North America tend to be insular. Baseball is not played in many places, and is widely derided by non-Americans as arrogant for staging the World Series.

Hockey is played in North America but not many other places, other than the colder parts of Europe. American football is known as American football in the rest of the world because it is so specific to the country. (Not even Canada plays by the same rules.)

Basketball is, actually, played in more than a few countries, and it is probably the No. 2 sport in more than a few of them, but it’s not like the rest of the planet knows March Madness from the March Hare.

But the most self-focused of all American sports, I’ve decided?

Horse racing.

Which we are learning anew, this week.

Coming up Saturday is the Dubai World Cup. Which is both a one-day race card and the name of the climactic race.

It is contested at Meydan Racecourse, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid‘s 60,000-capacity tribute to equine overstatement. It is a mighty, shiny cavernous thing that 364 days a year stands empty or nearly so.

But on that 365th day, Dubai World Cup day …

Many of the most prominent members of the horsie set gather for this thing each year. From Japan and Australia and England and France and Hong Kong. Ireland. All the major nodes of global horse racing.

And, sometimes, even a few American horses and trainers and owners.

The American approach to the Dubai World Cup is to pretty much ignore it. Last Saturday of March? American owners and trainers are thinking about the first Saturday in May.

It seems as if American racing believes it is a perfectly self-contained entity. OK, maybe there is a bit of rubbing with “foreigners” when hanging around yearling sales, but the rest of the time? American racing believes it is a self-sufficient industry, immune to market forces, from Santa Anita to Saratoga, disinterested in what “sport of kings” aficionados might be up to on the other side of the world.

If all that isn’t true … well the rest of the world seems to believe it, which can make U.S. horses and trainers and owners objects of scorn. For not playing with others, but also for not knowing much about them, which seems worse than an overt rejection.

From 2010 through 2014, American horses hardly came over to run in the Dubai World Cup, even though the big race is worth $10 million ($6 million to the winner), and two other races are worth $6 million. Two more are worth $2 million and the other four are worth $1 million each.

The DWC has a couple of problems, from the American horseman’s blinkered perspective. Too many turf races (five of the nine), and one of them is for Purebred Arabians, and who runs them?

And for the first five years of Meydan’s existence (taking over from Nad Al Sheba, home to the first 14 DWCs) … the “dirt” races were run on Tapeta, a synthetic “dirt-like” surface that American owners and trainers would rather eat than run on.

Sheikh Mohammed seemed to become disturbed/annoyed that U.S. horses were giving his event a pass — aside from Animal Kingdom‘s victory in the big race in 2013.

He certainly remembered the very first Dubai World Cup, in 1996, when the mighty Cigar came over and showed why he was unbeaten in 13 races by extending that streak to 14 and validating the basic premise of the DWC: That it is the biggest day in racing.

(Breeders’ Cup backers may argue the point, but they have split their event into a two-day thing, and if we’re talking one day, than Dubai squishes it, especially in terms of money. That $30 million-in-one-day thing, which makes it the richest day in sports, actually.)

So, after the 2014 DWC, at which about three American horses, total, made the trip over to the Gulf, Sheikh Mohammed ripped up the Tapeta track and put in dirt. Just like the Americans like it.

And, lo, something like 16 American-owned horses came over for this edition of the DWC. Including California Chrome, whose semi-working-class owners see “$6 million to win the main event” and get interested. Even though, fairly predictably, Chrome’s trainer, crusty ol’ Art Sherman, earlier this year said he saw no reason for Chrome to go to Dubai, and he would do so only under orders from the owners — which is how it went down.

Meanwhile, what is going on back in the States? Are horse fans there in a lather about the Dubai World Cup, and Chrome and Lea going in the main event? And Mshawish, Todd Pletcher‘s horse, running in the $6 million Dubai Turf? (An event Pletcher apparently couldn’t be bothered to attend, what with all his Kentucky Derby hopefuls commanding his attention.)

In a word: No.

American horse racing just goes on its merry way, trying to figure out how to deal with off-track betting and casinos on every corner — and then the Triple Crown and the Breeders Cup.

It’s odd. It’s about money. It’s about a shrinking world, where nowhere is too far for those with the will and the interest. Which is what American racing pretty much lacks and always has.