There is a very simple fact that doesn’t seem as though European racing fans can accept – Ka Ying Rising does not need Royal Ascot, Royal Ascot needs him.
Not just the world’s best sprinter any more, David Hayes’ all-conquering speedster is outright the world’s best horse according to Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings for the first four months of the year.
4lb clear of Romantic Warrior, another Hong Kong superstar, it is fair to say we are in the golden age of Hong Kong horses and everyone in the region is most certainly savouring it.
Ka Ying Rising, currently on a win streak of 20 after blitzing his rivals in the Group One Chairman’s Sprint Prize (1,200m) last month, has continued to look like the iron horse – there are simply no chinks in his armour.
Many said his trip to last year’s Group One The Everest (1,200m) – his first venture outside Hong Kong – would see him exposed, but he laughed off that notion by decimating Australia’s best sprinters with his head firmly in his chest.
Despite all these facts, there seems to be a group of racing fans that cannot accept that the son of Shamexpress is the best horse in the world, and it is always because ‘he hasn’t come to Europe and Royal Ascot to prove it’.
Money makes the world go around, and with the Chairman’s Sprint Prize netting his connections HK$13 million (£1.23 million) for first place, it is hard not to snigger at the fact a trip to Royal Ascot would see him competing for a measly total prize fund of HK$10.23m (£1 million) in the Group One Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (1,200m).
Prize money aside, though, people also point to the issue of ‘prestige’. ‘Ka Ying Rising needs to come to Royal Ascot for the prestige’, many people continue to say.
Maybe 10 years ago, but Royal Ascot, especially in the sprinting sense, has become a disappointing element of British racing. Of the last five winners of the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes, two of them have been won by Australian horses – Nature Strip (2022) and Asfoora (2024).
The latter horse, whom many Australians would consider a Group Two horse on their shores, would go on to win the Group One Nunthorpe Stakes (1,000m) at York the next year and even won the Group One Prix de l’Abbaye (1,000m) in France two starts later.
To further add to the point, Japan’s Satono Reve finished second in the 2025 running of the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes. The start before that? Ka Ying Rising left him trailing two and three-quarter lengths in his wake in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize.
If Frankel, the 10-time Group One-winning freak trained on British shores, can be considered one of the greatest horses of all time despite never leaving England, let alone Europe, then why is Ka Ying Rising not being given similar leeway? After all, he has actually left Hong Kong shores to beat Australia’s best sprinters.
I love British racing, it is where I grew up and gained my passion for the sport, but I think there needs to be an acceptance of one simple fact. Right now, the British sprinting division is beneath Ka Ying Rising, and Royal Ascot is not enough of a draw for him to come and prove it in the flesh.
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