Ka Ying Rising’s own jockey doubted him – but then he ripped almost a second off his own Sha Tin track 1200m record, with a pointed message for the Everest field waiting in Australia.
Zac Purton has ridden Ka Ying Rising to 21 straight wins. He has also spent the past fortnight complaining about him.
Hong Kong’s champion sprinter had failed to change his leading leg in each of his two barrier trials ahead of Sunday’s season-opening G3 HKSAR Chief Executive’s Cup, and his jockey – a man not known for hiding his opinions – made sure everyone knew it. So when Ka Ying Rising cleared out to the biggest winning margin of his career, in a time that ripped close to a full second off his own track record, there was a certain irony in watching racing’s toughest marker reduced to a single word.
“Wow,” Purton told Idol Horse at his reaction to the demolition job.
Then, pressed on whether it was the six-year-old’s best performance ever: “Well, the time says it was. You can’t say it is not. To give twenty pounds away to the rest of the field, and to give them a hiding, and run the time that he did – it is freakish.”
The numbers back him up. Ka Ying Rising conceded 20 pounds to his five rivals, who were all assigned the 115-pound limit weight, and still stopped the clock at 1:06.11 for the 1200 meters – 0.99 seconds inside the record he set in April’s G1 Chairman’s Sprint Prize, and 1.39 seconds faster than the mark Sacred Kingdom held for 17 years until Ka Ying Rising first broke it in 2024. This was the fifth time he has lowered the Sha Tin 1200m record himself.
Trainer David Hayes had sensed it coming all week, even after the horse kicked a wall on Monday and was forced to undergo scans before being cleared to run. “1:06!” he exclaimed as his horse crossed the line seven and three-quarter lengths clear. “With 200 meters to go I said to somebody, ‘He is going to break the record,’ because Zac had pushed him.”
Hayes pointed to a horse who arrived at Sunday’s meeting 29 pounds heavier than at his previous start – his heaviest race day weight ever at 1172 pounds (532 kgs) – and who has visibly matured out of the raw, on-his-toes youngster he once was.
“He is bigger and better,” Hayes said. “When my horses moved recently because the stables were being renovated, most of them didn’t eat to their full capacity for a week. Ka Ying ate up straight away. He is just a different beast, and it shows.”
The win took Ka Ying Rising to 22 victories from 24 career starts – his last defeat was in January 2024 and by the time he lines up for The Everest at Randwick on October 17, it will be exactly 1,000 days since he last lost a race.
Purton revealed Sunday’s demolition was a deliberate correction after what he considers an underdone campaign into last year’s Everest – albeit one Ka Ying Rising still won.
“Last year I idled him down in this race and he went to Randwick and cheated in the barrier trial, then wasn’t at his best on race day,” Purton said. “He got to the quarantine facility and thought he was on holidays. That was the mode he was in. I want to make sure he’s more ready this time, and give him more of a hit-out, because I’d like him to go down to Australia and do something like he did today.”
Purton has been watching the local opposition build in his homeland: Tempted, runner-up to Ka Ying Rising in last year’s Everest, has won four straight since, including the G3 Concorde Stakes first-up at Randwick on Saturday, while three-year-old Guest House signaled himself as a rising force on his return in the G3 San Domenico Stakes a week earlier.
“They are the world’s best sprinters down there in Australia, and they are at home in their backyard,” Purton said. “They just have to turn up to the races. We have to travel all the way down there, get prepared and perform on a different surface – he doesn’t have an equine pool, there are more hurdles for us. But I think he will be a better horse this year. They do have a nice bunch of sprinters coming through, so it’s not going to be easy. We need to be at our best.”
For now, Ka Ying Rising went straight into quarantine at Sha Tin after the race and his flight to Sydney is under two weeks away. His jockey, having finally run out of criticisms, has settled on a demand instead: no holidays this time, just a show for the world.
“He’s already won an Everest,” Purton said. “We can’t ask anything more of him. But I’d like him to put on a performance the world remembers.”
This article first appeared in Idol Horse as "Purton Was Ka Ying Rising’s Harshest Critic – The Champion Answered Him In Freakish Fashion".
