I’ve been watching horse racing for 56 years. I used to grab the Best Bets form guide from the milk bar on the way to school when I was six – lucky I could ride, because I didn’t do much school. I was too busy tipping winners to the teachers. So when I tell you I’ve seen a lot of horses, I mean it.
Where do I put Ka Ying Rising? The two best horses I have ever seen are Frankel and Flightline – and I wouldn’t split them. They could be two of the best of all time – they both had a sustained speed that other horses just didn’t have. I’ve now got Ka Ying Rising right behind that top tier. He is the best horse to ever race in Hong Kong. Better than Romantic Warrior, Golden Sixty and Silent Witness – and that’s no disrespect to them, they are all champions.
Over the last five decades, in Australia, there was Kingston Town, Makybe Diva, Winx and Black Caviar. In Japan, Deep Impact and Equinox. In America the horses that come to mind for me, personally, are Cigar, Big Brown and Zenyatta. In Europe there have been so many: horses like Dubai Millennium and Baaeed. They were all champions but I have Ka Ying Rising ahead of them.
And it’s not just me saying it. Good judges – people whose opinions I respect – are telling me he could be the best horse they have ever seen race. Not that I need them to tell me. I can see it for myself, and so can anybody who watches him.
What makes him different? He is abnormal. Ka Ying Rising is a freak. He can quicken off a fast pace, which is near impossible. On Sunday, Ka Ying Rising ran 200m sectionals of 10.7 seconds and 10.72s between the 800 metre and 400m mark then broke the race open by running 10.45s from the 400m to the 200m.
Most horses, when the speed is on and they’re already under pressure, they can’t find more. They just hang on or they fade. Ka Ying Rising does the opposite – he accelerates when everything around him is slowing down. And he doesn’t do it once. He does it every time.
That’s the part people need to understand. Many horses have a peak performance – one day when everything clicks and they produce something extraordinary. Think of a horse like Via Sistina. Her run in the 2024 Cox Plate was unbelievable, one of the great individual performances you’ll see. But she never reproduced that level of performance again. She won a lot of races after it, good races, but that was a clear peak. She never went to that peak again, it was a moment in time.
Ka Ying Rising doesn’t have a peak performance. He peaks every time. That’s what separates him from the very good horses and puts him with the freaks. The consistency at that level is what makes a horse truly great – not one brilliant day, but the ability to reproduce it again and again and again.
The times back it up, too. He ran a new track record of 1:07.10 on Sunday, that is 0.4 seconds faster than Sacred Kingdom’s best ever time. There is no doubt he can run under one minute and seven seconds for 1200 metres if jockey Zac Purton wants him to. That is extraordinary. You don’t fluke those numbers, and you don’t produce them unless you’re doing something other horses simply cannot do.
Ka Ying Rising is doing things other horses can’t do. He’s not just the best in Hong Kong right now – he’s the best Hong Kong has ever had, and he belongs in the conversation about the greatest racehorses of all time.
Racing’s Sprinting Snobbery: Why It’s Wrong
There’s always a little tag that follows a great sprinter around: “But he’s just a sprinter.” As if that makes him less. As if 1200 metres is a lesser discipline than 2000 or 2400. I hear it from Europe especially.
In the human athletics world, it’s the complete opposite. The sprinters are the superstars. Usain Bolt, Carl Lewis were household names, the biggest stars the sport has ever produced. Ask anyone on the street to name a famous runner and they’ll give you a sprinter, every time.
Here’s a question: on the same day Ka Ying Rising broke the track record at Sha Tin, someone did the seemingly impossible in athletics – a man broke the two-hour barrier in the marathon for the first time in an official race. Can you name him? It was Sabastian Sawe – who people would struggle to name – but everyone knows Usain Bolt. In human sport, we idolise speed. In horse racing, some people seem to dismiss it.
Racing’s old guard has always put more weight on middle distance horses and stayers. The ratings favour them, the prestige favours them, the history books favour them. A lot of that comes from Europe, where the classic distances are king and sprinting has always been seen as a support act. In Japan it’s the same.
I don’t see sprinting as a lesser discipline. Speed is the purest test in any sport. And what Ka Ying Rising is doing at 1200 metres – the times he’s running, the way he quickens off pace, the consistency of it – is as extraordinary as anything any horse has ever done over any distance. The only difference is that some people have decided one matters more than the other. They’re wrong.
Ka Ying Rising doesn’t need to prove himself over a mile or 2000 metres. He’s already proving it every time he steps onto the track. The question isn’t whether he’s great – it’s whether racing is ready to admit that a sprinter can be the best horse in the world.
Could He Run A Mile? Yes. Should He? No
I think Ka Ying Rising could run a mile on his ear. I’ve got no doubt about it. You’ve seen what he does over 1400 metres – Zac just sits on him, box seat, the horse relaxes beautifully, and then he puts them away whenever he wants. He’s better now than he’s ever been because Zac isn’t bustling him early the way he used to. He lets the horse get into his stride, saves that energy, and when he asks for it, Ka Ying Rising just puts four lengths on them in three strides off a fast pace. A horse that can do that over 1400 can absolutely run a mile.
Could he even run 2000 metres? Maybe. I wouldn’t rule it out.
But I would not do it. If I were David Hayes, I am not running this horse over a mile. Not a chance.
I’ve seen too many good horses have their hearts broken by going too far out of their comfort zone. It’s the biggest mistake trainers make. They see a horse dominating at one distance and think, imagine what he could do over further. And then they take him there, and the horse is never the same again. It can break them – physically and mentally. You push a horse beyond what it’s built for and sometimes they don’t come back.
Silent Witness is the perfect example. He was a machine over the short course – won his first 17 starts in Hong Kong and was as dominant a sprinter as you could ask for. Then they took him to a mile. He ran 1:33 but was narrowly beaten by his stablemate Bullish Luck in the Champions Mile (winning time of 1:33.70). He won a Sprinters’ Stakes after that but he never won in Hong Kong again and was never the same horse. That race took something out of him.
Ka Ying Rising is better than Silent Witness. But that doesn’t mean you test the theory. He’s so dominant at what he does – why would you risk it? There’s a difference between saying a horse could do something and saying he should. He could run a mile. The cost of finding out isn’t worth it. Not when he’s the best sprinter Hong Kong has ever seen and possibly the best sprinter the world has ever seen.
Leave him where he is. Let him keep doing what he does. Don’t break his heart. ∎
