It was this week 35 years ago that trainer David Hayes took on the world with Better Loosen Up, taking a daring trip across the globe to become the first Australian trainer to win the world’s richest race, the Japan Cup.
“What a day that was!” David said, still justifiably proud of the achievements of Better Loosen Up, the Australian Horse Of The Year and Racing Hall Of Fame member who he thinks we didn’t actually see the best of.
“I think if he had raced for another year, if not for that tendon injury, we would be talking about an all-time great.”
Fast forward a few decades and David is again smiling as he says “it’s great to have another world champion!”
That horse of course being Ka Ying Rising who blew his rivals away with a dominant performance in Sunday’s Jockey Club Sprint at Sha Tin… his 15th consecutive victory.
And his first since returning from his trip to Sydney where his 1 1/4 length Everest victory was one where Australian racegoers saw a great horse not quite at his greatest.
“The way he came on from that race,” David said, “if they’d run it again a week later he would’ve won by five lengths.”
David has always been a fan of travelling horses, delighted by how much a trip away from home can improve them – and Ka Ying Rising certainly took much from his Sydney raid.
“He works along with 50, 70, 100 horses in the morning here in Hong Kong and in the early days he could be a bit jumpy, he’d use a lot of energy.”
“But in Sydney he had a track all to himself every morning and that does not happen much in a horse’s career. He had eight weeks of isolation during quarantine so it was a different experience for him and it made him much more relaxed.”
“And I think such an experience can make a horse feel special, they go from being part of a big stable to having that one-on-one attention.”
“It makes them more fool-proof, they are out of their routine and they have to adjust. I’ve found once they get home they settle into everything more easily.”
“I’d put it by saying that travel makes a horse more worldly.”
Better Loosen Up and Ka Ying Rising are two of several classy gallopers David has campaigned overseas with, the former recording a breathtakingly brilliant 5 1/2 length victory over Vo Rogue in the Australian Cup after his Tokyo success.
And it has not only been the international winners who have returned to Lindsay Park and excelled with David noting that “it is not just great performance overseas, its the experience. Fields Of Omagh failed to fire each time he went away but he’d come back to career peak efforts.”
Following his first W.S Cox Plate victory, Fields Of Omagh ran last in the Japan Cup and 11th in the Hong Kong Vase. Back home he ran second in the Cox Plate before finishing 12th in the Hong Kong Cup.
His next Cox Plate run was a game third behind Makybe Diva and the following March he won the Futurity Stakes in record time before a trip to the UAE where he was seventh in the Dubai Duty Free – later that year storming home to win his second Cox Plate at his memorable finale.
A triple Group winner before contesting the 1993 Hong Kong International Cup, Dark Ksar loved his ‘holiday,’ just three months later winning the Ranvet Stakes at Gr.1 level.
Following his Melbourne Cup win Jeune ran sixth (Rough Habit was seventh) in the Japan Cup and less that three months later he was charging home to win the C.F Orr Stakes, later that campaign adding another Gr.1 – the Queen Elizabeth Stakes – to his impressive record.
Criterion raced in Hong Kong on three occasions and after the first two of those trips he won Gr.1 races in Australia.
Niconero also headed overseas three times and he too was in flying form after the first two of those; his 2006 Champions Mile at Shatin 12th followed by elite level wins in the Kingston Town Classic and the Futurity Stakes.
He was able to win both of those races again – as well as the Australian Cup – after a Dubai Duty Free 11th in 2008.
Eagle Falls ran fifth in the Golden Shaheen in Dubai and the International Sprint in Singapore prior to his Oakleigh Plate victory whilst Fraar ran second (to Ethereal’s dam Romanee Conti) in the Hong Kong Cup six months before his Caulfield Cup.
Such successful returns to racing after overseas sojourns gave David the confidence when it was time for Ka Ying Rising to head to Sydney – “I had no fear whatsoever that he would be better for the trip,” he said.
And that horse being better than ever is certainly something to be excited about!
“I am not saying that he can improve on what he did on Sunday,” David said as he prepares for his champ’s second crack at next month’s Hong Kong International Sprint, “but he is certainly going to easily maintain that form.”
It was one of Ka Ying Rising’s early wins that David first started to think that he had something out of the ordinary.
“He was an odds-on favourite, the track was rain affected and he was a three-year-old taking on and giving weight to the horses. It was like a reverse weight-for-age as he had top weight and I was scared!”
“But he just beat them so easily, it was then I knew that he was something special.”
Though there were earlier signs, Ka Ying Rising winning every trial he competed in.
“Hong Kong trials are different than those in Australia,” David said – “they go at a frantic pace and you can run into a good horse. And he wasn’t getting beaten in any of them.”
And that was when Ka Ying Rising was still on the immature side; now at five all the more powerful and impressive.
“He continues to put on weight and is becoming more professional.”
“I had nine horses race on Sunday and he was the only one who ate up – it was just a track gallop for him.”
David had seen a number of outstanding sprinters during his time as a trainer, recalling that “I had horses competing against Silent Witness and I thought he was the best I’d seen. Then along came Black Caviar.”
“I’d say that Ka Ying Rising is comparable to that pair, he is just an incredible horse.”
