Just a few weeks ago, Sydney trainer Bjorn Baker had resigned himself to the fact that he would struggle to sell shares in the new Nadeem gelding that had joined his yard. But today, he is fighting off inquiries.

The reason for the surge in interest is due, in part, to media giants such as CNN and its 24 million Twitter followers.

CNN was one of the world’s bigger media organisations that initially covered the story of the recent public poll in Europe to name the polar research vessel Boaty McBoatface and so when a horse gets named Horsey McHorseface, it could hardly refuse a follow-up.

Baker said today that he had been taken aback by the interest in his formerly nondescript horse.

‘’It’s fair to say there’s been a bit of interest. I couldn’t sell him but I’m going to sell him now,’’ Baker said.

‘’Can you believe it? Horsey McHorseface – he’s more famous than Black Caviar.’’

Baker explained that he’d purchased the horse at the ready to run sale and had not yet named the horse when a new owner came onto the scene.

‘’I’ve got a large majority of the horse – I bought him at the ready to runs – but he’s by Nadeem and he’s not that popular up here (NSW) so I struggled to sell him and I thought that I’m just going to have to race him myself.

‘’But then a bloke called Joe Rossetti – who I didn’t know – bought a small share and then it came time to register him and we just said what do you want to call him and he said ‘’Horsey McHorseface’’ and I said ‘no problem’ and it just went from there.

‘’I thought it was an amusing name and we debated if we should call him that. We had a bit of a laugh in the office about it and I don’t even know if we thought it would be allowed.

‘’My racing manager Jack said it would be embarrassing – you wouldn’t do it and I said ‘who cares’ we haven’t done things the normal way since we’ve been here (from New Zealand) so give Joe his name.’’

Baker said it would be a while before Horse McHorseface makes it to the track. ‘’He’s probably got to trial and that – he has only been in (work) for a week or so so he’s at least a month off trialing.’’

Away from the name, Baker said the two-year-old gelding moved well in the early stages of his first preparation. ‘’He’s actually a nice horse. I like him,’’ he said.