The American colt California Chrome has landed in Dubai ahead of his first race on foreign soil — the $10 million Dubai World Cup next weekend.

It seems possible the decision by Chrome’s owners to run the winner of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Santa Anita Derby at Dubai’s Meydan Racecourse could translate into more interest in the U.S. in the UAE’s big event, which comes at the end of a nine-race card worth $30 million. (Making it the biggest day in racing, in terms of money.)

The sense in the the Old World is that U.S. racing is inward and a bit arrogant; certainly, most American horse fans pay little attention to racing on other continents.

But some of the best U.S. horses have made the monster trip over here, starting with “super horse” Cigar, which helped put the Dubai World Cup on the map in its first running, back in 1996, by providing the inaugural event with a famous winner.

California Chrome, like Cigar an unusually popular horse, will be hoping to reprise that American success of 19 years ago, in Dubai next Saturday.

And it could lead to an enormous payday for the horse’s Regular Guy owners: Running first is worth $6 million.

That’s a lot of oats.

The odd thing about this?

Chrome’s crusty old trainer, Art Sherman, believed to be 77, last month clearly was not happy that Chrome’s owners were pointing the horse at Dubai, pretty much on the other side of the world from Los Alamitos, California, which is were Chrome is stabled.

“The owners always said they wanted him to run against the best in the world, so I suppose that is where we will have to go,” Sherman said of the trip to Dubai.

“To me, it is a long way. I’ve never been there before. Your horse goes over there and they say it takes three months to ­recover.”

U.S. horses are coming over to Dubai in some strength this year, 16 of them, in large part because the Meydan Racecourse pulled up its Tapeta artificial surface and replaced it with honest dirt, the surface American horses usually run on.

They got to the Gulf via a special service, Janah equine transport, that crates horses all around the world — a 19-hour journey, in Chrome’s case.

Art Sherman’s son, Alan, was in Dubai to welcome Chrome to the Arabian Gulf, and the old man himself is expected to follow soon.

(The Etihad Airlines nonstop from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi, still less than a year old, takes about 15 hours; going back is longer, more like 16.5 hours, making it one of the longest passenger flights in the world. I’ve done it, and it’s brutal. I hope Art flew business class.)

Alan Sherman told reporters that California Chrome seemed to have survived the travel without incident. People who insist it isn’t hard on horses to travel big distances (and they rarely are horse people) claim that the runners often come out of the transport plane looking frisky.

Hard to imagine Chrome could be as fresh as the local horse, African Story, which won the 2014 Dubai World Cup for Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the ruler of the emirate of Dubai, and hopes to repeat this year.

The presence of the defending champ, the home-town horse, against the hot new American invader, Chrome … well, you’ve got the start of the sort of geographical rivalry that attracts horse fans — and just regular fans.

Also, Sheikh Mohammed is … oh, let’s say “well-funded” … while the owners of Chrome, Perry Martin of Yuba City, California, and Steve Coburn of Topaz Lake, Nevada, started out without much more money than you or me. They just happened to hit paydirt with a horse whose dam was considered a bad risk.

Martin and Coburn run DAP Racing, and the DAP stands for “dumb-ass partners” — after the duo were told numerous times that buying Chrome’s mother showed how much they didn’t know about thoroughbreds.

So, Chrome is in the Emirates, and now we begin the countdown to the big event, and for the first time in a while one of the protagonists is an American horse, which ought to pique some interest,  back in the States.

Could be fun.