The rail at Hong Kong barrier trials is usually the preserve of stopwatch-clutching hardcores. On Sunday it was three-deep with kids, full of sugar and sticky with ice cream, as Hong Kong’s family carnival closed – and somewhere in the middle of the noise, Ka Ying Rising did what he always does: made it look easy.
He cruised through his work, he didn’t need to change legs – and the double act that follows him everywhere ran to schedule too. Zac Purton found the flaw. David Hayes found the funny side. Trackwork, trials, wins, and the two men’s assessments of them: with this horse, it all arrives like clockwork.
The formality itself was a 1000-metre turf trial at Sha Tin, and the world’s highest-rated sprinter treated it as exactly that – leading throughout, never asked a serious question, two lengths clear in 56.73 seconds. What mattered more than the clock was the habit: for the second time in nine days, he’d done it all on one lead leg, without ever switching.
Purton wanted the full package and didn’t get it – again.
“Frustrating,” Purton said. “The fact that he just does it so easily on that one leg is unique, but he’s going to have to get back to changing his legs and doing everything right to get back into the zone that he was in last season. Hopefully the case is that he’s saving it for raceday. It’d be disappointing if it wasn’t, but when he starts to do everything right, he continues to do everything right, right? It’s just like he’s forgotten what he needs to do.”
Hayes laughed the whole thing off. “When he’s running course records, he changes legs. When he’s in trials, he doesn’t need to, you know?” he said. “And Zac says he’s never ridden a horse that can go so fast on one leg.”
What the trainer saw instead was a horse in exactly the frame of mind he wanted. “I just like the way he acted before the trial,” Hayes said. “I think he’s in the right headspace and ready to run a really good race next week.”
That “really good race” is Sunday’s Group 3 HKSAR Chief Executive’s Cup – on paper just another win at Hong Kong’s minimum odds of 1.05, but also base camp for a horse attempting to become the second back-to-back winner of The Everest. A 21st consecutive win in a streak that is becoming less of a statistic and more of a cultural phenomenon. Hayes isn’t treating it as anything more than the first foothold.
“You spell horses, trying to make them bigger and stronger, especially if they’re a sprinter, and he’s bigger and stronger than he’s ever been, so I still think we’ve got another season of him improving,” he said. He’ll carry topweight on Sunday – 135 pounds, but Hayes had a way of putting a positive spin on that as well: “If it was a real handicap, he would not have 135 pounds but 155,” he said.
While Hayes has Sunday directly in front of him, he’s also watching what’s assembling on the other side of the mountain in Australia.
“I saw a couple of good ones on the weekend,” Hayes said. “The Golden Slipper winner looked good, but they all have to keep improving. Tom Dabernig had a very nice horse by Nicconi, but he goes to the next stage. I really watch closely when the races become good ones.”
The Golden Slipper winner Hayes was referring to is Guest House, who put an emphatic full stop on any first-up doubts on Saturday, smashing a 19-year-old track record in the G3 San Domenico Stakes at Rosehill under Zac Lloyd. Co-trainer Mick Price, who admitted he was braced for his colt to be vulnerable fresh over 1100m, watched him fight through traffic and grind out a length-and-a-quarter win – enough to firm the Coolmore-owned colt from $17 into $13 in pre-post markets for a start in Coolmore’s Everest slot. Of Lloyd’s ride, Price simply said: “Zac just owns these races, doesn’t he?”
The Nicconi gelding is Oliveanotherday – trained by Tom Dabernig, Hayes’ nephew. The Warrnambool galloper made his own case at Caulfield on Saturday, taking out the G3 Heath Stakes as the $2.30 favourite. Dabernig isn’t getting ahead of himself with an Everest bid, but he’s not ruling it out either. “If the opportunity presented, we would fully embrace it,” he said, with the Manikato Stakes and Bobbie Lewis Quality mapped out as the likely route to The Everest.
For now, none of that changes what Hayes needs from Sunday. Base camp first. The final ascent – and whoever steps up to challenge the champ – can wait until October. ∎
