The 68 seconds at Randwick exposed a stewarding gap Sydney should not accept and set up a rematch racing rarely gets.
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The Everest took 68.21 seconds to run and we've been talking about it for seven days, so what's another few hundred words?
Most of the talk has focused on the first 20 seconds: barrier 11 and the early scramble. The telling part came next, once Ka Ying Rising was caught wide without cover, with five horses going flat out inside him.
From there, Zac Purton was in harm minimization mode. Three or four wide is bad enough; being there without cover, after working to get there, is close to unwinnable. That he lost only narrowly says plenty.
Spicy Martini wasn't the only factor, but her run kept him out there, left him traveling seven meters further than Tempted and halted his momentum in a way the winner's wasn't.
So how did the stewards explain it? Their Everest report ran to about 100 words. Ka Ying Rising, beaten at $1.04 on the World Pool, isn't mentioned. Spicy Martini gets one line, about being bumped by Ninja. Nothing on her instructions, nothing on where the favorite ended up.
Detail came later from her trainer, Toby Edmonds, via journalist Steve Hewlett on X. Jockey Taylor Marshall was told to jump fast and make the horses outside him work. When Ka Ying Rising went back instead, the mare was posted three wide outside Ninja and, in the trainer's words, "at her top for too long."
None of this raises an integrity question. But Hong Kong punters poured a record HK$113 million into the race, and when a horse as short as Ka Ying Rising is beaten, a stewards' report should do more than confirm nothing was untoward. It should explain why things happened, and help analysts and the public look past whether Purton rode well or badly. Harmonized rules are only half of it: with pools this big, does it matter where the race is?
Sydney has long been the standard setter, the room that was a pathway to Hong Kong for John Schreck, Jamie Stier, Kim Kelly, Steve Railton and current chief steward Marc Van Gestel. Is Saturday's report what we expect from the place that taught Hong Kong how it's done?
The Everest has dominated Australian racing's news cycle. Anyone with a smartphone and a YouTube channel has devoted hours to the ride and the rematch. Former Racing NSW boss Peter V'landys, now gone to rugby league, built The Everest to drag attention to a wavering Sydney spring. Plenty scoffed at a slot race in 2017, but the 10th running delivered.
The same day, Kingswood won the Caulfield Cup, and all we've heard since is the fall that brought down Half Yours and cost Ohope Wins her life. That was cruel luck. The Melbourne spring is under pressure and its major races have become lightning rods for the animal rights debate. This time of year was supposed to belong to Victoria.
The Everest can now build what the Cups lost: horses coming back year after year, and with them, rivalries.
The score between Tempted and Ka Ying Rising is one-all and there's a chance both go unbeaten for the next 12 months and arrive at Randwick for a best-of-three decider, something racing rarely offers.
Tempted's performance, racing against pattern up on the speed and holding on, was extraordinary. Can she repeat it, the way Ka Ying Rising has repeated his peak for more than two years?
For now, we can look forward to another 12 months of talking about Saturday’s 68 seconds.
