Ka Ying Rising just can’t stay out of the headlines even when he’s taking things easy in rural Guangdong. As Royal Ascot’s Group 1 action wound up with Satono Reve and Joliestar fighting a four-way finish to the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes, his name was being touted for next year’s race.
Hong Kong’s phenomenal champion has already put the Japanese horse and the Australian mare in their place a time or two, but his absence from Ascot last weekend was a topic for discussion given Ascot officials’ yearning to have him there.
The British press leapt on comments by Ascot’s director of racing and public affairs Nick Smith saying Ka Ying Rising’s trainer David Hayes had made “positive noises” about next year’s Royal Meeting for the world’s top-rated galloper.
Paddock-side pundits from Australia’s Channel 7 even had him all but locked in for next year.
“I haven’t said no,” Hayes told Idol Horse on Monday. “It’s a possibility but it’s probably unlikely.”
The Everest, Sydney racing’s AU$20 million behemoth, the world’s richest sprint, is both the lure and the roadblock that could keep Ka Ying Rising away from Royal Ascot next year just as it has this year.
“The Everest is an incredible race and it’s financially very rewarding,” Hayes continued. “And the horse is from Australia and so am I, so I’ll always give The Everest priority.”
That gives Ascot’s overtures a bit of a ‘Lloyd Christmas’ vibe: the scene in the classic 1990s comedy film Dumb and Dumber where the Jim Carrey-played title character is given the odds on the likelihood of him hooking the eligible bachelorette Mary Swanson.
“Level with me, what are my chances?”
“Not good.”
“You mean not good like one out of a hundred?”
“I’d say more like one out of a million.”
“So, you’re telling me there’s a chance!”
Flippancy aside, it seems there is a chance, but while it’s perhaps shorter than a million to one, it’s still a longshot. Royal Ascot 2027 is down the priority list for the Ka Ying Rising camp and if it does bob to the top, it will be after Hong Kong’s champion has “ticked some boxes” for his owner Leung Shek-kong and his Ka Ying Syndicate through the next 10 months.
Leung, as Hayes and the gelding’s jockey Zac Purton pointed out, is the one who will have the final say anyway.
“He’s going for a ‘threepeat’ of the two Hong Kong international races, the Hong Kong Sprint and the Chairman’s Sprint Prize, and a repeat of The Everest,” Hayes said. “If he does all those again, the owner might be tempted to have a crack.”
But, as things stand, the thinking from Hayes is that Ka Ying Rising will most likely repeat what he is doing now as he prepares for a second run in October’s Everest, and go towards a third run in The Everest in 2027. The Randwick race is worth AU$20 million (£10.5 million) total, the Jubilee at Ascot is worth £1 million (AU$1.9 million) with a winner’s purse last Saturday of £567,100 (AU$1.07 million).
The primary reasons are plain. The Everest’s massive prize money is an obvious draw, and then there’s a desire to avoid the increased rigours of travelling to England in June, back to Hong Kong then on to Sydney, Australia and back to Hong Kong within a four-month span.
Smith has spoken about incentives and bonuses Ascot might offer to entice such a special case as Ka Ying Rising, and Hayes told Idol Horse some kind of bonus linked to the Hong Kong Sprint or Chairman’s Sprint Prize might increase the appeal of an Ascot assignment.
“But it’s more about the horse,” Hayes said. “If there was no Everest it would be an absolute no-brainer to go to Ascot, but the problem (for Ascot) is The Everest. It means he actually doesn’t get a break at any stage if he goes to Ascot. He’d have to stay in training after his grand final in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize, and then he’s got to go to England, then get back here to prepare for The Everest and probably need a lead-up race, so it’s inconvenient.
“This horse is averaging prize money earnings of $1.2 million Aussie per race, so about £600,000 and he’d be running for less than that at Ascot. So, what we’re doing is working at not putting him at risk. When you get a freak like him in your life, you’ll do anything that doesn’t put any risk on them, and every time you travel, it’s a risk.”
Right now, Ka Ying Rising is coming back into work off a few weeks of deserved downtime at the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Conghua training complex in China.
“We’re copy and pasting last season and that’s why I was adamant he wasn’t going to Ascot this year,” Hayes said. “He gets a month in the paddock at Conghua, then he’s had a week of swimming and water walking because it’s very hot, and he’s just started doing cantering. He’ll have his work increased the second week of July with a view to running the first day of the new season.
“And going to Australia is not like going from England to America: we have quarantine in Australia and quarantine in Hong Kong, so he does probably six weeks in isolation when he goes to Australia, so it’s a very big overseas trip and I just don’t want to pull the string too far.”
What Ascot has always leaned on in the absence of big prize money is the experience: the event’s long and storied history, the presence of the British royal family at their track, its status as Europe’s most prestigious meeting and the kudos victory brings.
“Let’s be honest, the owner doesn’t need any money, he’s an extremely wealthy person and money is not his god, but he’s an extremely successful businessman and he’s got to weigh up what’s more important to him,” Purton told Idol Horse.
“We had a great experience going to Australia to win the Everest which is the world’s richest sprint race, so would he want to go there a third time or would he find more value in going to Royal Ascot?
“As I’ve got later into my life and become more successful, I’ve realised that experiences sometimes are worth more than the financial aspect,” Purton continued. “Royal Ascot is an experience: you’re in front of the royal family, you’ve got all the best horses in Europe racing there, it’s a fantastic racecourse, but you don’t go there because of the prize money.
“At the end of the day, the owner has to weigh up whether he wants the experience of Royal Ascot or whether he wants the prize money, racing at Randwick for AU$20 million.”
The possibility that the prestige Ascot carries might sway Leung and Hayes come next April, after the Chairman’s Sprint Prize, that’s the positivity Ascot is picking from Hayes’s comments.
“If he’s won two Everests and six international races in Hong Kong and 13 or 14 Group 1s, the owner then might want to do it, you never know,” Hayes said.
“And if the owner wants to do that and the horse is well, I’d take a chance, it wouldn’t stop me. If the connections were keen and he was well, I’ve got a top hat and tails, I’d love to do it.”
But even those thoughts are tempered by the current reality and the firm feeling in the Ka Ying Rising camp that although Ascot would be great sport, when it comes to the champion’s rare athletic prowess and his undoubted greatness, he doesn’t need to go there to prove how good he is.
“The owner treasures the horse,” Hayes added. “Owners in Hong Kong can only have a couple of horses, so to have something like Ka Ying Rising, I think he’d rather go for longevity than prestige. I think that’s his feeling at the moment, and that’s the (Hong Kong) Jockey Club’s feeling as well.” ∎
