I dreamed a dream...

IT isn't often that I introduce my dreams into an article but these are different times and the show around Ka Ying Rising tackling The Everest is taking on some wild dimensions.

Rarely, if ever, has the expectation around a racehorse horse visiting from overseas for a major race been this high-pitched.

Nothing amongst the local opposition sprinters has really thrown down the gauntlet to the tourist, we're at the point where anything but victory will be seen as failure and it's tough to find any new angle around the bid.

But the Australian Turf Club which stages The Everest has made an attempt.

For his barrier trial on Tuesday, there will be no betting, no prizemoney but a ton of attention. There hasn't been this much public focus on a training session since Maradona joined Naples.

Champion jockey Zac Purton will fly into Sydney, trainer David Hayes will be on hand and the public has been invited to feast on free coffee and bacon and egg rolls at Royal Randwick if they rock up to see the trial in the flesh.

There was a time 50 years ago when crowds of 10,000 used to turn up at Randwick once a year for the trials of the new crop of unraced two-year-olds, but who knows what sort of roll up they'll get for this one trial.

Purton won't be the first rider to fly to Australia and back overnight to trial one - I recall Brett Prebble doing the same to test drive a potential purchase for Hong Kong by billionaire property developer Robert Ng.

Trainers frequently turn up in the late stages of a horse's prep for a big event but, in a dream I had, Hayes surprised everyone by actually turning up to ride Ka Ying Rising in the Tuesday trial

In a set of colours hastily arranged the day before the trial, Hayes emerges ready to mount up and Purton looks confused but calm.

That's one of many ways that I know it's a dream - I think I know Zac well enough to be sure that his reaction in such a scenario would be somewhat more animated that that.

Ka Ying Rising wouldn't be the first champion horse to have an unlikely rider at a key preparation moment.

In the week leading up to his 1988 AJC Derby win, Australia's champion racehorse of the time, Beau Zam was ridden in his work by Princess Anne, an accomplished horsewoman who also competed at an Olympic Games. The gallop with Beau Zam went off perfectly, although the princess had a harmless fall off her other ride that morning, a green, new two-year-old. She was later rewarded with tea and scones at trainer Bart Cummings' stables.

Beau Zam also took no ill effects from the morning's celebrity encounter and took the Derby five and a half lengths.

Back to the dream.

Donald Trump's physician recently reported David Hayes as 2 metres tall and a svelte, rippling 80kg figure, though closer inspection in real life might not support that assessment. Hayes clambers aboard Ka Ying Rising to the surprise of all around, and takes him out to trial.

He is looking a touch rusty and awkward in the saddle.

It wasn't always so, as this 1982 photo of Hayes leading Lindsay Park's Melbourne Cup hopeful Our Paddy Boy out to work shows.

"I rode work when I was young and I reckon I was a good 6 or 7 out of 10," Hayes says. "Actually, when I came back from Hong Kong the first time, I did quite a bit of riding as I was teaching my kids to ride. I mustn't have been a bad teacher - they've all turned out good track riders themselves. The last time I rode fast work would be, I guess, about 15 years ago. There is video of it somewhere - me riding a gallop with Chad Schofield the day we opened the new track at Euroa."

In the dream, Hayes gets around safely on Ka Ying Rising but in a lacklustre sixth, obviously in extenuating circumstances, but short of what's expected.

Of course, any sideshow, imagined or real, around Ka Ying Rising's barrier trial on Tuesday is just that - a sideshow to something purely commonplace and functional.

For all the outsized attention they get from racing fans nowadays, a barrier trial is nothing but a training aid.

Purton is there, in his own words, "because I wouldn't want some cowboy giving the horse the wrong type of trial. I know what he needs and I'll make sure he gets it."

While Hayes chuckles at the idea of him riding the champion in an imagined trial and even more at the idea he might run sixth.

"If he didn't trial well on Tuesday, it would be the first time in his life that he hasn't," he said.