2026 The Everest: Idol Horse Power Rankings (September 10)

The gap didn’t close. It widened.

Ka Ying Rising returned at Sha Tin on Sunday and took almost a full second off his own track record. Everything our panel debated a week ago – who is best of the rest, who deserves a slot, who is trending – now sits under a much longer shadow.

Below him, the Australian spring is warming up and slowly sorting an order. Tempted was electric first-up in the Concorde. My Gladiola finally got her Group 1 in the Moir. Headwall came back from a year off and ran the favourite to a long neck. And two names from our last board are gone: Giga Kick was beaten a long way in the Moir, and Pembley is being freshened for a tilt at the G1 Coolmore Stud Stakes after disappointing in the G2 Furious Stakes.

Here’s how our experts rate the challengers lining up to chase down the champ.

1. Ka Ying Rising –

Age/Sex: 6YO Gelding
Trainer: David Hayes
Race Record: 24:22-2-0
Biggest Win: G1 The Everest (2025)

Unanimous, and by a margin that grew rather than shrank. He led throughout in the G3 HKSAR Chief Executive’s Cup for a 21st straight win, beating Copartner Prance by seven and three-quarter lengths and stopping the clock at 1:06.11 – a fifth Sha Tin 1200m course record, and almost a second inside the mark he set in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize in April. He’d spent five or six hours under veterinary attention four days earlier having hind-leg bruising scanned. David Hayes called him “bigger, stronger and better”, and Zac Purton, who eased down in the same race last year, let him run to the line this time. He went straight into quarantine for Australia.

One panellist framed the challengers’ problem: for anything to beat him, something would have to go wrong early, forcing him back to launch from the same place as his rivals – roughly the odds of being dealt a full house off the deal.

Shane Dye has put the same thing more bluntly in his column for Idol Horse: the very good horses, he wrote, keep running into something they simply cannot get past. Eleven of them are ranked below.

2. Tempted –

Age/Sex: 4YO Mare
Trainer: Ciaron Maher
Race Record: 13:8-2-2
Biggest Win: G1 Surround Stakes (2026)

Unwound from midfield in the G2 Concorde and beat Headwall by a long neck at just her second career start over 1000m. “On her trials and her work, we were pretty confident coming in,” Ciaron Maher said. “But just her turn of foot. It still amazes you. She even got there too soon, just because she is so electric.” She goes to the G2 Premiere Stakes on October 3, then the Everest a fortnight later.

Our panel is unanimous that she has established herself as Australia’s leading representative. It is equally unanimous that Sunday at Sha Tin made the distance between second and first look further, not shorter. Maher watched it too: “I’ve seen the big Ka Ying. He’s getting better as well, so we need to.”

3. Guest House –

Age/Sex: 3YO Colt
Trainer: Mick Price & Michael Kent Jnr
Race Record: 5:3-1-1
Biggest Win: G1 Golden Slipper (2026)

Holds his place on the back of the most striking single performance by a three-year-old this spring – a San Domenico track record that had stood since 2007, and the first Golden Slipper winner to complete that double since 1991, done the hard way through a gap that was barely there. Co-trainers Mick Price and Michael Kent Jr have him aimed at a Golden Rose–Everest–Coolmore Stud Stakes treble, and the Golden Rose is the next question to be answered. Price’s own view is that the colt should improve for that first-up run. “There should be more to come. I’ve allowed for it.”

4. Joliestar –

Age/Sex: 6YO Mare
Trainer: Chris Waller
Race Record: 22:10-4-4
Biggest Win: G1 TJ Smith Stakes (2026)

Australia’s reigning Champion Sprinter took another quiet step on Tuesday, going round in the opening 900m heat at Rosehill – Chris Waller’s home track, and a hit-out that told you little because it wasn’t meant to. She was fine without being asked a question, just like the Randwick heat a fortnight ago where James McDonald never let her off the bridle and she held her ground in fifth.

The plan hasn’t moved: the G2 Shorts (1100m) on September 19, then a month into the Everest. “She runs so well fresh,” Waller has said. She is also, unlike most of the horses below her, expected to fill Waller’s own slot rather than audition for somebody else’s – and her trainer has been unbothered by the horse casting a shadow over the whole race. “You can’t be afraid of one horse,” he said. Third in the Jubilee at Royal Ascot in June says the mare has the class to justify that. Nothing this week moved her in either direction.

5. Ninja –

Age/Sex: 4YO Gelding
Trainer: Michael Freedman
Race Record: 9:5-1-2
Biggest Win: G2 Hobartville Stakes (2026)

Holds firm, and we now know for certain he’ll be there. The Fairway Thoroughbreds slot was committed to him on Saturday – no surprise given Camilleri both bred and part-owns him, but it makes Ninja the first of Ka Ying Rising’s rivals officially locked into the race. He trialled at Rosehill on Tuesday ahead of a return in the G2 Shorts on September 19, still without a run since the G2 Missile Stakes, now more than a month ago. Michael Freedman’s line from a fortnight ago has aged well: any trainer with a half-decent sprinter dreams of getting here at this time of year, and if the horse takes another step, you dream bigger. The dreaming part is now settled – the next part remains unanswered.

6. Oliveanotherday ↑1

Age/Sex: 4YO Gelding
Trainer: Tom Dabernig
Race Record: 8:6-1-0
Biggest Win: G3 The Heath (2026)

Up one, on a winning streak that now reads five and on slot-holder interest that connections have acknowledged without confirming. Tom Dabernig is still declining to commit – “we won’t get ahead of ourselves just yet” – but our experts are less hesitant than his trainer, and every one of them has him inside the top seven. He is the horse most likely to be talked into a slot rather than out of one.

7. Beiwacht ↓1

Age/Sex: 4YO Horse
Trainer: Chris Waller
Race Record: 14:4-3-1
Biggest Win: G1 Memsie Stakes (2026)

The split in our panel is wide here – one expert has him seventh, another tenth – and the reason is the same in both cases. The Memsie was emphatic, a three-length win under Nash Rawiller and a third Group 1 at 1400m. But Chris Waller’s own framing points away from Randwick and toward international targets and a 1500m Golden Eagle. With Tempted’s Concorde now confirming her as Godolphin’s clear No. 1 seed, the case for Beiwacht getting a slot at all has weakened rather than strengthened. A very good horse, drifting toward a different race.

8. My Gladiola NEW

Age/Sex: 4YO Mare
Trainer: John McArdle
Race Record: 13:3-5-1
Biggest Win: G1 Moir Stakes (2026)

The week’s breakthrough. The grey ran down Cavalry Girl by a short neck at $9.50 in the G1 Moir at Sandown, with beaten favourite Natural Fling three-quarters of a length away third — a first Group 1 for a mare who had spent 18 months battling against elite company, with placings in the Black Caviar Lightning and Coolmore Stud Stakes to show for it. Jockey Jamie Mott: “When I let her go, it was just bang. She’s so sharp, and she’s come back even better mentally and physically.”

The Moir nearly didn’t happen – trainer John McArdle admitted he had considered scratching her when rain came through on Saturday morning. “Thank God I second guessed myself a little bit,” he said. Our panel’s verdict is that her jump-out form was no fluke, she proved it on the weekend and if a slot opens up she is the horse most ready to slide into it.

9. Angel Capital ↓1

Age/Sex: 5YO Horse
Trainer: Chris Waller
Race Record: 17:5-2-2
Biggest Win: G2 Autumn Stakes (2025)

Our most divided runner – one expert has him as high as seventh, another as low as eleventh – and he has done nothing since the Memsie to settle the argument either way. The high-floor, low-ceiling case is intact, and so is Ben Melham’s explanation for the Memsie 10th: “He hates the ground.” He drops a place only because two horses beneath him actually went out and won.

10. Headwall NEW

Age/Sex: 7YO Gelding
Trainer: Matthew Smith
Race Record: 19:7-6-4
Biggest Win: G3 Concorde Stakes (2025)

Back on the board after 365 days away. He won this same race last year before a pastern injury ended his season, and returned to run Tempted to a long neck – a performance that reframes the winner as much as the runner-up. Matthew Smith had flagged it: “He’s a horse who could win a Group 1 this prep. He’s ready to go and he’ll improve into the preparation.” He’d also been holding his breath through every gallop.

The problem is the same one that beat him last spring: he still doesn’t hold a slot. He heads to the Shorts next, with the Premiere and a Sydney Stakes consolation as the fallbacks if nobody calls. On Saturday’s evidence, somebody will. 

11. Jimmysstar ↓1

Age/Sex: 7YO Gelding
Trainer: Ciaron Maher
Race Record: 29:11-5-4
Biggest Win: Russell Balding Stakes (2025)

Idle since the Memsie ninth, and still carrying the excuses offered at the time – a torrid run, a horse laying all over him, no chance to quicken. Our experts remain forgiving in principle but unconvinced in practice. He needs a run, and soon, because the horses passing him are producing results rather than excuses.

12. Lady Shenandoah ↓3

Age/Sex: 5YO Mare
Trainer: Chris Waller
Race Record: 16-5:4:3
Biggest Win: G1 Coolmore Classic (2025)

The horse our panel is furthest apart on – one expert still rates her eighth, the other left her off the list entirely. Her talent has never been the question. Three Group 1s and a seventh in last year’s Everest are on the board, and she has been solid without being spectacular since.

Her spot in the race is the real question. Lady Shenandoah went into last year’s race in John Camilleri’s Fairway Thoroughbreds slot, and on Saturday Camilleri gave it to Ninja. She is now a triple Group 1 winner with no obvious way into a race she was unplaced in 12 months ago, and with Joliestar committed to Chris Waller’s own slot, her trainer’s other door is shut too. Which makes Saturday’s G2 Sheraco Stakes at Rosehill the most consequential run of any horse on this list: top weight, the widest draw, and a shrinking number of slot-holders left to convince. Win it the hard way and she is back in the conversation. ∎

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