Winning machines Zenyatta, Black Caviar and Winx all get a look in as Matt Brocklebank previews Ka Ying Rising's bid to make it 20 wins on the spin in Sunday's Chairman's Sprint Prize.
You can follow Matt's Hong Kong features throughout the week in the lead-up to Sunday's FWD Champions Day fixture at Sha Tin...
20-20 vision
Celebration Chase day at Sandown Park and thoughts turn to heroes of years gone by. We'll all have our favourites - Edredon Bleu, Well Chief, Sire De Grugy, Sprinter Sacre. Take your pick.
Today Jonbon bids to join former stablemate Altior as the only other three-time winner of the race. The 2019 Celebration saw Altior win his 19th race in a row, a sequence ended only by Cyrname in the 'testing' autumn conditions at Ascot.
19 in a row. Some broad-minded racing fans with reasonable memories are also to recall a mare named Zenyatta.
Trained by John Shirreffs and ridden by Mike Smith, Zenyatta won a dozen Grade 1 races between April 2008 and October 2010. She landed the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in late-October ’08, as well as the Breeders’ Cup Classic the following year, before going off a popular favourite for the 2010 Classic having by that stage gone unbeaten in her first 19 career starts.
As it turned out, 20 proved to be one step too far for her too, Smith chastising himself for setting the gallant Zenyatta too tall a task in what proved to be her swansong outing after coming up just a head short in one of the most dramatic stretch-run finishes of Breeders’ Cup history.
“I just left her too much to do,” Zenyatta’s rider said as he fought back the tears in front of the world’s glare during the post-race press conference at Churchill Downs.
“It’s taken a lot of time, I still get choked up,” the now 60-year-old Smith admitted in a far more relaxed environment during a World Horse Racing interview last autumn – a mere 15 years on from that agonising defeat.
In spite of Big Money Mike’s enduring smile, it still hurts.
Steely-eyed Australian Zac Purton, approaching the autumn of his career himself and soon to be nine-time champion jockey here in Hong Kong, doesn’t cut the figure of a man with too many regrets in the saddle.
Last year he was the subject of some… emotionally-charged, public feedback from Maureen Haggas after reportedly giving Newmarket raider Lake Forest the worst ride she had ever seen, to which his own quite colourful response concluded with: “…she's entitled to that, no problem.”
It wasn’t lost on many that less than two hours prior to the Lake Forest debacle at Randwick, Purton had steered Ka Ying Rising to win the A$20 million Group 1 TAB Everest – surely the most pressurised 68.13 seconds of his life – but there’s a sense that the criticism was water off a duck’s back for the man they used to call ‘The Pointer’.
Since the Everest in October, Hong Kong’s latest sprint star has added another handful of local victories to his CV and in February he broke the 21-year record set by Silent Witness for consecutive wins in this country.
And although Ka Ying Rising suffered a couple of handicap defeats very earlier on his career, Timeform’s 2025 Horse of the Year now stands at 19 triumphs on the bounce and on the brink of another significant milestone going into Sunday’s Chairman’s Sprint Prize on FWD Champions Day.
20 consecutive wins...!? 🚀
— HKJC Racing (@HKJC_Racing) April 17, 2026
Ka Ying Rising returns on #FWDChampionsDay seeking even more history when he lines up in the Chairman's Sprint Prize! 🏆
📍 Sha Tin, 26 April | @zpurton | #HKracing pic.twitter.com/IHaPohNBSe
A 20th straight win – something the great Zenyatta was unable to achieve on the other side of the world – and second success in the Sha Tin Group 1 is considered no more than a formality for most handicappers. As well as outwardly not carrying much to regret, the five-year-old’s big-race jockey also doesn’t seem to harbour many doubts.
Purton said: “He’s a very fit horse, he’s fresh and he looks good. We’re expecting a similar performance to the ones he’s been putting up.
“We gave him a whizz around on the grass last week, we fired him up and he was a little bit fresh – he hadn’t done much since the last race. He knows when I get on him, he’s there to do a little bit more work.
“David kindly took the hood off him and fired him right up. I’d had my Weetabix before I went to the track – and I needed them! He was on song and skipped up the straight really, really comfortably. He extended really nicely and ran a good time, especially the last furlong.
“Then I jumped on him last Tuesday, on the dirt with the hood on. After having that hit-out, he was a little bit more relaxed again and his normal self. Since then, David hasn’t had to do too much with him.”
Frankly speaking
Purton is well rehearsed in the power of an equine megastar and what that can generate for the racing world.
In 2012 he made his sole appearance at Royal Ascot, winning the King’s Stand Stakes on Little Bridge for trainer Danny Shum just half an hour after Frankel’s breathtaking Queen Anne performance, win number 11 of the great horse's 14 earning him a peak Timeform rating of 147.
Four days later, Purton watched on as compatriot Luke Nolen almost downed tools too soon as 1/10 shot Black Caviar scrambled home to the relief of many in the Diamond Jubilee. It was the remarkable mare’s 22nd successive win, her career tally eventually ending at a perfect 25-25 the following spring.
This weekend Ka Ying Rising is quoted at 1/20 with bookmakers back home, a clear indication of the horse’s dominance over the division. Just like Smith, and the rather more fortunate Nolen who happened to come out on the right side of a fractional timing issue, Purton knows sprinters can live on something of a knife-edge, but he feels in order to take that seemingly straightforward step from 19 to 20, consistency is going to be key.
“He never does anything any different,” Purton said. “He just works great all the time, his action is always beautiful. He recovers very quickly and his athletic ability is what sets him apart from the other horses.”
The pleasure not all mine
If all goes according to plan for Ka Ying Rising, Black Caviar’s 25 will be firmly in sight, and talk has already turned to the 33-race winning sequence racked up by fellow ‘Wonder from Down Under’ Winx between 2015 and 2019.
Winx’s former jockey Hugh Bowman, the 45-year-old who has just about seen it all and remains a legend here, has seen the back of Ka Ying Rising a dozen times aboard Helios Express in the past 18 months. He’s preparing to “pad up and go out to bat again” on Sunday – and will do so with pleasure.
However, he was happy to put his inquisitor right about one thing first.
“Winx won 33 in a row, she actually won 37 in total,” he said proudly.
“But he is a special athlete. Just as a racing enthusiast, although I’m competing against him it really is an absolute pleasure to see an athlete of his calibre.
“Without worrying about all the numbers, the track records, and everything that comes with it, it’s just nice to sit back and watch a thoroughbred like that perform to the level he does. The way he can leave top horses by four lengths at the top of the lane is extraordinary.
“We all want to see competitive and see something come and challenge him, it’s probably not going to happen any time soon."
You can follow Matt's Hong Kong features throughout the week in the lead-up to Sunday's FWD Champions Day fixture at Sha Tin...
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