Brian Kan retired as a trainer in 2003, after 25 years under licence. Five times champion trainer, he saddled up the winners of 844 races.

He joined the trainers' ranks in 1978/79, the very first season of the new Sha Tin Racecourse. He soon established himself as the leading local Chinese trainer - a Hong Kong boy, born in the New Territories, as opposed to a northerner from Shanghai. He originally became associated with horses when working in a Chinese restaurant in England, at Epsom, a well known training centre south of London. At his own initiative he accepted an invitation to visit a local stable and never looked back. Keenly competitive, he dominated the prestige trophy races in the '80s; he sent out five Hong Kong Derby winners and six Gold Cup winners.