From Cairns To Ka Ying Rising: Hong Kong Racing’s New Cult Hero, Tomodachi Kokoroe
Could a one-time bush galloper go from stomping rabbits and breaking track records in Far North Queensland, to defeating the world’s best sprinter? It would be no less likely than the extraordinary path the horse took to Sha Tin.
From Cairns To Ka Ying Rising: Hong Kong Racing’s New Cult Hero, Tomodachi Kokoroe
Could a one-time bush galloper go from stomping rabbits and breaking track records in Far North Queensland, to defeating the world’s best sprinter? It would be no less likely than the extraordinary path the horse took to Sha Tin.
20 November, 2025WHEN TOMODACHI KOKOROE races at Sha Tin, his former trainer Ricky Ludwig is up late in Cairns watching. By the time his former horse crosses the line, it’s getting on in the evening in Far North Queensland. When he wins the phone starts buzzing.
“I can’t sleep after he wins,” Ludwig says. Three times it has happened this Hong Kong season. Three times Ludwig has fielded the texts and messages into the night.
As the wins stack up, the inevitable question pings on to the screen: do you regret selling the surprise star of the Hong Kong sprinting ranks?
Ludwig doesn’t hesitate.
“No, I don’t get jealous like that. They paid me the money for the horse and I was happy with that money. It was good money at the time. And he won me 98 grand in six starts anyway!”
It’s a long way from the tropics of Cairns to Hong Kong – but everything about this horse has been a journey.
Cairns sits closer to Papua New Guinea than it does to Brisbane. It’s racing’s northern-most outpost on the eastern seaboard of Australia – the last ‘TAB racing’ in Queensland – where Ludwig keeps two or three horses just to avoid driving his wife mad in retirement. After years training down around Brisbane, he’d scaled right back.
“I retired when I came up here,” he explains. “I don’t train for anyone else, only for myself. But the wife said ‘get a horse, you’re driving me mad.’ So I’ve been lucky – 90 percent of them have paid for themselves.”
In early 2022, Ludwig was browsing Inglis Digital when he spotted Lot 1: a three-year-old gelding by Written Tycoon, three starts for Mike Moroney, no wins. The horse had cost $190,000 as a Magic Millions yearling but was now being offloaded for considerably less.
Ludwig made some calls. Moroney said there was nothing wrong with the horse – the owner just needed to sell. The spelling farm said the same: beautiful horse, no issues, quiet as you like.
“He was born on my birthday, October 5th,” Ludwig grins. “I said ‘oh, I gotta buy him.'”
At $25,000, the horse then known as Bank Bank Bank became his.
The 48-hour float journey from Melbourne to Cairns – with a two-week stopover in Caloundra to break up the trip – was just the beginning. What walked off the truck wasn’t polished – it was powerful. “Big strong horse … a very dominant horse,” Ludwig says, “Not nasty, but dominant,” laughing about a peculiar yard habit you don’t read in the pedigree pages.
“He’d kill rabbits. They’d get under his feet in the box – if they got in there, you’d find them dead. He’d stomp them.”
Ludwig had to keep neighbouring yards empty because Bank Bank Bank would fight over fences, threatening to hurt himself. But on the track he was different.
“First gallop, I had Dave Crossland riding him – he was a top rider, probably getting on a bit but still sharp. He came back and didn’t say much at first. Then he goes: ‘Where’d you pinch him?’ I said ‘I don’t know, will he win a race at Atherton?’ He said ‘He’ll win at any track you take him to. This is the best horse I’ve ever ridden.'”
Crossland had ridden Tyzone – a north Queensland hero – and just like Bank Bank Bank, by Written Tycoon. Tyzone won his way from Cairns to winning a Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap down in the big smoke. “He said Bank Bank Bank was better,” Ludwig says. “And he was right.”
Bank Bank Bank won from 875 to 1500 meters and broke track records at Townsville. He was attracting interest from Hong Kong buyers, but getting him qualified to be sold there wasn’t straightforward. Horses just aren’t purchased from Cairns for Hong Kong.
“If he hadn’t won his last start, we wouldn’t have got him there,” Ludwig says. “His rating wasn’t high enough. You need 63 minimum. He had to win all six races we put him in.”
Between agreeing the sale – just under $400,000 to the Tak Sum Syndicate – and the vet checks clearing, Ludwig’s daughters Sandra and Karen left a garbage bag on his stable doorstep. Why?
“It was full of bubble wrap,” Ludwig laughs. “They said ‘wrap him in it so nothing happens before we sell him!’ It was a nervous couple of weeks, mate.”
So when the deal cleared, did Ludwig buy anything nice with the windfall?
“Mate, I haven’t even seen the money yet.”
Why’s that?
“My wife’s got it. You ever see money once your wife gets it?” He grins, Beryl within earshot. “She just says I’ll buy more horses. She buys our groceries out of the bank interest now.”
In Hong Kong, the horse was renamed Tomodachi Kokoroe and took time to find his feet. He won four races over three seasons but by late 2025 had gone 585 days between wins – 17 consecutive starts without success. His rating had reached 94. That area around triple figures can be a brutal ‘hump’ for horses, where the competition gets razor sharp.
Then this season, something clicked. David Hayes fitted a one-eyed blinker. Harry Bentley took over in the saddle. But Ludwig reckons it’s something simpler.
“They were riding him for speed at Happy Valley,” he says. “When I had him, we rode him behind – never led, whether it was 800 or 1,400. He’s got all the speed in the world, but you settle him and he finishes. That’s how Bentley’s riding him now.”
Whatever the formula, it’s working. Three wins on the trot and twice he’s cracked 68 seconds for 1200 meters at Sha Tin. His 67.68 is the second-fastest time ever recorded at the track.
The fastest? That belongs to his stablemate Ka Ying Rising – Hong Kong’s Horse of the Year, winner of 14 straight including the Everest and odds-on favorite for the G2 Jockey Club Sprint on November 23. The monster is ready to ruin the fairytale.
Ludwig will be there to watch in-person when they are likely to meet again come December in the G1 LONGINES Hong Kong Sprint. The odds of Tomodachi Kokoroe upsetting Ka Ying Rising are longer than the float trip from Melbourne to Cairns but Ludwig dares to dream.
“I’d be more confident if it was a handicap,” he admits. “But you never know. Ka Ying Rising had to travel for The Everest – maybe that took something out of him …”
He lets the line hang. It would rank among Hong Kong racing’s greatest boilovers – bigger even than Bullish Luck ending his stablemate Silent Witness’s 17-race streak in the 2005 G1 Champions Mile. But given where this horse has come from, who’s to say? It is no less likely than what has already occurred.
Hope springs eternal up north in Australia. Last year Ludwig was browsing the online sales again when he found an unraced two-year-old half-brother to Bank Bank Bank. Again, it was Lot 1.
“An omen,” Ludwig said. “That was good enough for me.”
The youngster – by Jungle Cat – is getting ready for the trials now. And Ludwig has already named him.
The name? Bank Interest. ∎
