Ka Ying Whoosh!! What the heck was that about?

It was the raw number that knocked out every eye after Sunday's Chief Executive's Cup and there should have been some facility on the Jockey Club's multi-million dollar infield screen to crown it with fireworks or make it flash and dance around in colours bright - 1.06.11.

If we dispense with the couple of faster race times recorded in Japan or the United States - where races have a moving start and the timer does not begin when the gates open but once horses are already running - Ka Ying Rising ran the fastest turf 1200m time ever recorded anywhere.

And I'm not here to pour cold water on it - under 135 pounds, this was Ka Ying Rising's best performance yet, though perhaps the visual slightly flattered due to the conditions and the style of the race, and not that much better than his next best performance.

Firstly, the conditions, as they were sizzling.

I can find other days In the last 20 years when the Sha Tin trackspeed was as fast - as calculated is a vis the standard times for different classes - but none faster.

The writing was on the wall after the seven-year-old maiden Good Fortune broke through 1 minute 8.6 seconds winning the first race - no other Class 5 winner had ever run faster time over 1200m at Sha Tin.

Then Ka Ying Rising blitzed the track record by almost a second, which still seem outrageous even on a quick track, but the rest of the meeting put things into context.

In the race after Ka Ying Rising, another Class 5 maiden, General Smart became the first horse of that grade ever to bust 1 min 34 seconds for 1600m.

So, three of the first four races had run all-time fastest records for the class over their distance and by the time the meeting was over, so had Baby Sakura in the Class 3 1400m and another three winners were In the top three times for the class/distance of all time.

Why would that be so?

According to the Jockey Club's Head of Raceday Operations, Tracks and Racing Facilities, Stephen Higgins, there was no different preparation for the track for opening day, other than the replacement of a 110m portion of track in between the 1200m and 1000m.

Higgins suggests that part of the course may have been marginally quicker as a result but

everything else was as usual on opening day - the summer grass was mown at the standard 4 inches and the track had been renovated along standard lines during the summer break.

But Higgins' view of the track condition in general - and it's a popular one amongst people who spend a lot of time analysing times in Hong Kong racing - is that climatic conditions were ideal for fast times.

"The tracks, as you know, dry pretty fast here, but I always feel that the perfect track is when there is good moisture around but then the track has time to dry out, so the very top is drier but with good moisture below, which makes it more comfortable for horses," Higgins explained. "We had 13mm of rain overnight, and therefore didn’t water on raceday morning, which I think created the perfect track under warm, drying winds."

When I say the times were the fastest of all time, I really mean the last 20 years.

However, I'm confident about all-time records because the Sha Tin track gets a little quicker, by increments of hundredths of seconds, every year.

For example, there are more Class 4 races over 1200m run every season than any other class and distance, so it's a key benchmark when looking at times.

Twenty years ago, the class average was about 70.3 seconds. It is the best part of a second faster now.

That's why any attempt to compare Ka Ying Rising's times with the great Silent Witness, the other truly extraordinary sprinter in Hong Kong history, really fail badly on a surface level, as the changes in the speed of the track are overlooked.

When Ka Ying Rising returned from winning the 2025 The Everest, I thought it would be amusing to compare my own ratings for the champion with Silent Witness two decades earlier

There were some obvious difficulties to that, not the least of which was that I had been using different methods during the 2002-2005 career of Silent Witness, so it required the construction of standards and trackspeeds for races up to 23 years old. Let's just say that, stopping just short of being committed to an institution, I concluded that there was not a great deal between them up to their first 17 starts and Silent Witness was possibly a touch better.

At that point, though, their paths could not have diverged more widely.

Silent Witness is tried at 1600m and finally loses his unbeaten status, narrowly, in the Champions Mile and Yasuda Kinen - he was world class at a mile but not unbeatable.

He then returned to Japan and 1200m to win the Sprinters Stakes before inexplicably losing lengths of quality on his return home.

Some said it was a virus he caught during the trip, trainer Tony Cruz suggested the heavy double sedation required to get the 600-kilo powerhouse on to his return flight did the damage. In any case, he was a vastly inferior horse for the rest of his career and never won again.

For Ka Ying Rising though, the return from an overseas win seemed to put lengths on him and he went to another level, running ever faster last season in Hong Kong and now pushing the boundaries out further to somewhere even the best of Silent Witness never went.

But Sunday's time also had root in that successful The Everest tilt a year ago, as well as the speed of the conditions.

When Ka Ying Rising resumed with the Chief Executive's Cup in 2025 in 67.43 seconds, there was light rain on the day as this photo shows but, typical of Hong Kong tracks, the times were still fast - albeit a fair bit slower than Sunday.

But the gelding sat behind a pacesetter, who himself was not out to make time, and once clear was allowed to coast the line by Zac Purton over the last 100m.

As a result of not having a tough task, trainer David Hayes feels that Ka Ying Rising got away from him, in terms of fitness, after going through quarantine and the travel to Sydney.

He soon got up to speed after his barrier trial at Randwick that raised a few eyebrows and a good gallop, and all was well that ended well.

However, the lesson was learned and it was notable on Sunday that Purton was not willing to sit behind any rival and made a point of setting a strong pace through the middle stages before he sent Ka Ying Rising along hands and heels well into the straight.

The point being that Ka Ying Rising would enter quarantine this time off a tougher exercise, a run to ensure he will arrive in Sydney fitter than a year ago, but the by product of that was a much faster time in faster conditions as well.

In my view, Ka Ying Rising's win on Sunday was very comfortably ahead of last year's Chief Executive's Cup win (although not as far ahead of his win the same race two years ago) but perhaps the magical visual, the wow factor, was based in more prosaic reasons.

In my view, none of the chasing horses coped well with the high pressure, no-rest style of race and ran well short of their peaks, so there is some currency to the "what did he beat" argument.

It's true he has not really had a Hay List to keep him producing at his best, as did the super Australian mare Black Caviar, but it's also hard to think which top sprinter in the world has so far been missing from the line-ups he has beaten.

If there's a superstar out there, get them to The Everest and we'll see.