David Hayes knew the story was too good not to enjoy. At Sha Tin yesterday, the veteran trainer’s unlikely hero Tomodachi Kokoroe stormed home in the G2 Premier Bowl – his third win in a row – and Hayes couldn’t resist a grin.
“Ka Ying who?” he joked, nodding toward his Everest-winning stablemate Ka Ying Rising, the only horse ever to run faster at the track.
Tomodachi Kokoroe arrived in Hong Kong with form from the remote tracks of far-north Queensland, has stormed from Class 2 to Group 2 in a hurry and is running times usually reserved for world-class sprinters.
Before his Hong Kong adventure, Tomodachi Kokoroe raced as Bank Bank Bank for trainer Ricky Ludwig. He bought the horse from an online sale after the sprinter went winless from three starts in Victoria, then won six straight from Cairns to Townsville over 875 to 1,400 meters.
Sold to Hong Kong and imported by the Tak Sum Syndicate to be trained by Hayes, he was a ready-made underdog story.
Hayes admits this season’s transformation has surprised even him. The horse had won four times at Happy Valley but was three-from-30 before this campaign – until he suddenly exploded into life at the unlikely age of seven.
The trainer praised jockey Harry Bentley’s smooth ride that helped the 3.9 second favorite, carrying 115 pounds and rated 22 points lower than top weight Helios Express, to a length-and-a-quarter win over Raging Blizzard, with the 2.8 favorite Packing Hermod two lengths away in third.
“Sometimes you’d plan a race map that you’d pray your horse would get and Harry put it in that spot,” Hayes said. “Last week he had a terrible run and he still won. So I think he’s a legitimate, very good sprinter.”
That sprinting power was on full display again in the Premier Bowl, where Tomodachi Kokoroe clocked one minute, 07.39 seconds – the second-fastest 1,200-meter time ever run at Sha Tin. Only Ka Ying Rising’s 1:07.20, set in the 2025 Centenary Sprint Cup, has been quicker.
So how does a well-traveled seven-year-old suddenly start breaking 68 seconds – and do it twice in three starts, this time off a two-week back-up? Hayes says the answer might be a piece of rarely used gear: blinkers with one cowl, marked in racebooks as “BO,” fitted late last season.
“It’s the blinker. The one-eyed blinker,” he explained. “If you just look at his form, when the one-eyed blinker went on, he went up a class. And he’s just running straight now. He was always laying in, was a consistent horse making mistakes, but now he doesn’t make mistakes.”
Hayes said the tweak brought back memories of his first champion, the 1990 Japan Cup winner Better Loosen Up.
Bentley has now partnered the gelding to three wins from three rides this term. “They really do gel,” Hayes said.
Tomodachi Kokoroe will probably run in the traditional lead-up race, Hayes said, referring to the G2 on November 23.
But what about a David-and-Goliath clash – Hong Kong’s fairytale horse up against his superstar stablemate, fresh from his heroic Everest victory two weekends ago? Hayes smiled.
“They may yet race against each other next start in the G2, but it will depend on Ka Ying Rising’s recovery,” he said. “We’ll see how Ka Ying does when he gets out of quarantine.”
