Tough names at first glance but where's the depth in Hong Kong's top liners for the new season?

Ka Ying Rising canters at home in Saturday's trial

As is usual, there have been oversized positive responses to the barrier trials of world champion sprinter Ka Ying Rising as he prepares for Sunday’s return to the races but he has certainly left no doubt that that he will be fit and ready.

I can still recall regularly going to watch barrier trials in Sydney 40 years ago and the crowd was in low single digits. The internet has ensured a lot more attention for trials these days but the virtual oohs and aahs around what they look like tend to ignore that they are not races and are undeserving of such enthusiasm.

Ka Ying Rising’s runaway dirt trial win was in very good time but the excitement about margins was a little overdone – the last-placed, 38-rated nine-year-old Colonel was beaten just over 24 lengths, though the official handicap ratings have him 32 lengths inferior to Ka Ying Rising, if you want to use 3 pounds to a length!  

This observation is totally tongue in cheek, of course.

It was the trial you wanted to see but, giving it context, in a field of four where Ka Ying Rising was the only trier.

His trial down the straight on Saturday was against a better class of opposition, though note the field there was composed almost exclusively of run-on horses so once again Ka Ying Rising was able to go where and how he wanted, well clear of any other horse. Also an excellent trial and Hong Kong’s headline horse is on song, on target and will go around in the Chief Executive’s Cup at the odds of a presumptive winner. Zac Purton even noted Ka Ying Rising was a more relaxed animal now as a five-year-old.

But The Everest-bound Ka Ying Rising is the easy part when we are looking  at Hong Kong’s top liners.

How do the prospects beyond him look for Hong Kong in other international targets and even as a home defence team for events like the International Races in December?

On the same day that Ka Ying Rising resumes, Chancheng Glory and Self Improvement will represent Hong Kong in international dirt features in Seoul, optimistic placement in races mostly dominated by Japan and on an unfamilar surface that is usually very challenging for Hong Kong horses. Super Jockey went there to win the very first of these Korean races but he, Gun Pit and Rich Tapestry have been clearly the best Hong Kong dirt horses of the 21^st century and even semi-serious races on deep dirt or sand have been beyond the capabilities of others.

The obvious omission there is Romantic Warrior, after his excellent run in defeat in Saudi Arabia, so where is Hong Kong’s joint top-rated horse now?In May, the rising eight-year-old was reported with an injury to his left front fetlock. He had been an iron horse through his career until then but this was the first time that he required surgery and time off during the summer.

His preparation since early August looks smooth and uninterrupted, however, it is clear from looking at his work program that he is behind where he has been in previous preparations, when he had benefit of more residual fitness after training up to the end of the season.

When Romantic Warrior was getting ready for Melbourne in 2023, he had already barrier trialled by now and last year, when he resumed later, he was still ready to trial by mid-September. Looking at the light work he is undertaking at present, he looks behind that schedule, so we will see when Danny Shum is ready to ask more of him.

The horse, naturally, has nothing to prove and Shum is entitled to take him as gently as necessary to get past the issues – perhaps it will lead to a completely different program this time. He has three months to the December internationals but the clock is ticking.

His notional “replacement” is Voyage Bubble and perhaps we are in the minority with this horse in thinking he is a little below the standards set by Romantic Warrior, over middle distances, or Golden Sixty, over a mile, in recent years. Their absence from the Triple Crown races last season had a great deal to do with why he was able to achieve that treble, which had not been won for over 30 years.

That’s not to suggest Voyage Bubble isn’t worthy of acclaim – over the years, all stars face the “what did he beat?” challenge and the right response is always that he beat what lined up.  That’s all any horse can beat.

Presuming that he returns in top form, Voyage Bubble will still offer some strong opposition to visitors in December but he can only run in one race. With questions over Romantic Warrior’s fitness, there would appear to be an opening over either 1600m or 2000m for foreign horses, depending on whether Ricky Yiu goes to the Mile or the Cup with Voyage Bubble.

In any jurisdiction, there is always an expectation that the top classic age horses will emerge to challenge their elders and ultimately become the top line older horses, and that’s true in Hong Kong, even though the classic age is four rather than three.

But we have some queries on that group which contested the Classic Mile, Cup and Derby last season.

Of course, they will target the better races and names like My Wish, Rubylot, Packing Hermod, Divano, Cap Ferrat and so on are going to be in discussions about the international events, at least in the lead ups, but they look eligible rather than indomitable. Along with them will be emergent types like Light Years Charm or Hong Lok Golf, who did not contest the four-year-old series, or the year-older Patch Of Theta.

The ratings of the 2025 four-year-old series, however, weren’t anything special – at best, they were the bare minimums expected from those races – so we feel they have a bit to prove as older horses. They look more the types to run minor placings in the big races rather than to win them.

Packing Hermod does have ratings profile to become a serious horse, though it was notable that his figures dropped off once he got beyond 1400m and he was a disappointment in both the Classic Mile and Cup before missing the Derby altogether, so any weakness at a mile would sharply narrow his openings.

The names we already have in the 1600-2000m group are the talented Galaxy Patch, though he has not reached the heights most expected, Red Lion, a surprise victory over Voyage Bubble in the Champions Mile being his claim to G1 fame, and the ageing cohort of Beauty Joy, Straight Arron, Happy Together and another faded star, Beauty Eternal.

The 2024 Derby winner Massive Sovereign didn’t make a great impression in a start each last season for former trainer Dennis Yip in November, or for new trainer David Eustace when he resumed eight months later after hind fetlock surgery, so he has ground to make up.

While Ka Ying Rising ensures that the Hong Kong sprinters are regarded highly, the crust at the top end looks thin enough.

Helios Express is certainly presentable at the top level and perhaps, in another yard, he might be campaigned more ambitiously in a race like the Sprinters Stakes and look to get away from the champion he has chased home so often.

While he is not that far behind Ka Ying Rising in terms of his ability to run fast, his lack of any tactical ability makes him always beatable and when he has been ridden a touch closer in races looking to change that tactical equation, he has rated lower on our scale as his booming finish has suffered.

Lucky Sweynesse, Ka Ying Rising’s predecessor as the Hong Kong champion sprinter who ascended to the top of the world rankings, was largely our benchmark when we were the first to declare Ka Ying Rising the world’s best a year ago, the day after his Chief Executive’s Cup win. Lucky Sweynesse’s peak on our rating scale was 100, his regular level was 99. When Ka Ying Rising posted a 102 rating, it was clear that the emergent force was at least as good as his predecessor.

Since his peak days, Lucky Sweynesse, of course, had suffered the dual negatives of age and a year off with a near fore fetlock injury. He returned last season for two runs, the second of them showing some promise despite pulling up with an injury to his other front leg.

His rating in that second race, his yellow colours only three lengths off Helios Express when conceding the winner 12 pounds in a handicap, was still well below his best but returned a number that would put him in the mix with most of Hong Kong’s better sprinters.

During his peak days, there was always a lot of "will he, won’t he" about travelling overseas to compete and won’t was the easy winner.

Now, as a past-peak seven-year-old with some soundness issues, connections have finally decided the time is right to go offshore. Go figure. He is to run in the Chief Executive’s Cup too, before heading to Tokyo for the Sprinters Stakes in October so his performances will be of interest.

After the three named, Hong Kong sprint ranks mostly look capable rather than threatening and will rely on some of the up and coming four-year-olds – another blog on this site highlighted the speed and challenges of Colourful King – or five-year-olds like Wunderbar or Fast Network.

The possible outlier in all these considerations is rising six-year-old Beauty Waves, the runner-up under a light handicap in last year’s Chief Executive’s Cup who subsequently won the G3 National Day Cup, 1000m, also under a light weight and ran creditably in some other major races including a sixth in the Hong Kong Sprint.

None of those admirable efforts would earmark him as competitive at the best level, however, he had a change of trainer at the end of last campaign and won both starts for Tony Cruz. He equalled his previous best winning down the straight before improving on that in a particularly high-rating 1200m victory at Happy Valley in course record time at his most recent appearance - the highest rating performance at that track all season.

Those last two starts suggest Cruz, who has a long history of success at the top level, may have added a couple of lengths to Beauty Waves. Obviously, he would need to transfer that Happy Valley performance to Sha Tin but he would become a player in a the G1 races if he does.

 As for any distance beyond 2000m, Hong Kong is as undressed as usual so we won’t waste much time on that.

Aside from the occasion staying talent like Indigenous in the 90s, Exultant half a decade ago, Dominant, who fluked a 2013 Hong Kong Vase win after a great Purton ride in , or Russian Emperor, successful in Qatar, the cupboard is bare.

Voyage Bubble was the champion Hong Kong stayer last season, winning the Champions & Chater Cup at his only 2400m attempt, where he towelled up Rubylot and Cap Ferrat, but he won’t attempt it again until next year’s edition of the same race and probably those he left behind won’t either.