From a $500 mare to a global sprinting star - the remarkable tale of Ka Ying Rising

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Rodney Schick, studmaster and co-owner of Windsor Park Stud in the heart of New Zealand’s Waikato thoroughbred country, got chatting a few years ago with his main trainer Fraser Auret, a canny conditioner and trader, but a man with no experience in breeding.

“Fraser was at the farm one day and I was telling him that trainers should really make the best breeders,” Schick says.

“My point was that trainers have all these fillies who show potential but don’t make it to stakes class for one reason or another. Trainers know all this, so they’re well placed to do some breeding.”

The conversation brought into sharp focus a mare Auret had named Missy Moo. She was a daughter of the handsome “Italian Stallion” Per Incanto, who was making waves after being imported by Little Avondale Stud, one of Windsor Park’s many friendly New Zealand rivals.

Bought as a yearling by clients of Auret’s for all of NZ$500 at a New Zealand Bloodstock mixed sale in 2014, Missy Moo had had 28 starts for five non-metro wins, from six furlongs to a mile and a quarter and as many placings. She’d also run fourth and sixth at Group 3 level, but her promise was compromised by skeletal issues.

“Fraser knew he had heaps of ability but she’d suffered from arthritic joints from day dot,” Schick said. “He managed her really well to do what she did.

“He actually thought she had Group 1 quality, so he said, ‘OK, I’ll breed with her’.”

Then a seven-year-old whose career closed with an unplaced run in the 2019 Wellington Cup over two miles, Missy Moo - one of just three winners from seven runners for her dam - illustrated Schick’s point to a tee.

Auret booked Missy Moo in with Windsor Park’s then ten-year-old stallion Shamexpress. All matings are a roll of the dice, but this one more so.

A son of four-time Champion New Zealand sire O’Reilly, Shamexpress had been a fairly rare specimen for his time - a Kiwi-bred sprinter.

Shamexpress stands at Windsor Park Stud in New ZealandCredit: Windsor Park Stud

The country is famed for its stayers, and that’s what Melbourne trainer Danny O’Brien thought he was buying when he purchased Shamexpress for NZ$130,000 at the Karaka Yearling Sale of 2011. But the son of Volkrose, a mare who retired a maiden from four starts at a mile or more, would defy his bloodlines and his nation’s reputation.

“When Danny first bought him, he was preparing him as a Derby sort of horse,” Schick said. “He ended up working out he was a sprinter rather than a typical New Zealand stayer.”

Shamexpress debuted with a win over six furlongs at Flemington. Taken to what was thought a natural progression to seven furlongs for his third start at the same track, in the Group 2 VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes, he weakened in the straight to come fifth.

After twice trying again at seven furlongs as a spring three-year-old, he reverted to six for the stallion-making Coolmore Stud Stakes. He powered home at 50-1 to run third, cementing his role as a sprinter.

A few months later, as an autumn three-year-old in 2013, he won over five furlongs at Moonee Valley before ascending his personal summit, beating older sprinters to claim Australia’s grandest sprint, Flemington’s Newmarket Handicap over six.

Shamexpress couldn’t win again in nine more starts - including unplaced runs in Royal Ascot’s King’s Stand Stakes and Newmarket’s July Cup later in 2013 - but managed two Group 1 seconds, again up Flemington’s “straight six”. Windsor Park was more than happy to take him as a Kiwi-bred speed sire.

“There’s not many New Zealand horses who can win sprinting Group 1s, but Shamexpress did,” Schick says.

However, that cruel fate only discoverable once a stallion starts standing soon revealed itself.

Shamexpress had a healthy libido, but it was not matched by his fertility rate. It would average 60 per cent through his first four seasons, and drop to the low fifties for his next four.

Thus, Auret had his fingers doubly crossed when Missy Moo went to Shamexpress in 2019 - when the stallion would sire just 27 living foals from 62 covers, at 51.8 per cent.

To his delight, Missy Moo got in-foal, and gave birth to a colt on September 3, 2020.

And to the racing world’s great profit, that foal is now known as Ka Ying Rising, the highest-rated horse in the world.

The now five-year-old gelding is a four-time Hong Kong Group 1 winner, has a Timeform mark of 135 - just one point off Australia’s unbeaten phenomenon Black Caviar and former British star sprinter Battaash - and is the odds-on favourite for the world’s richest race on turf, the A$20 million The Everest, the coveted slot race that will be held at Sydney’s Randwick on October 18.

“It’s not a bad way to start breeding is it - by breeding a world champion?” Schick says, with classically dry New Zealand understatement.

Auret never intended to take his young colt to a yearling sale. Instead, after a trial, he sold him privately to the third generation of trainers from the famed Hayes dynasty at Australia’s Lindsay Park.

Brothers Ben, Will and JD Hayes are grandsons of the late great Colin Hayes, studmaster, occasional trainer for Queen Elizabeth, and premier trainer in Victoria 13 times and in his native South Australia 28 times.

After one Australian barrier trial - an impressive three-length success at Moe in rural Victoria in June 2023 - the gelding who started out as a colt named Mr Express was sent to the Hayes brothers’ father David in Hong Kong.

Two early glitches - seconds by the narrowest of margins at starts two and three - have denied him unbeaten status, but he’s won his other 14 outings, mostly with consummate ease under the territory’s leading rider Zac Purton, to become a budding phenomenon himself.

Recounting the star’s early days in Victoria, David Hayes last week said: “He was galloping like a nice horse, and then after his trial, one of my sons rang me and said, ‘Dad, I think this one’s pretty good. I’d suggest that he’s good enough to go to Hong Kong’.”

Hayes Snr was quickly impressed, particularly when at his fifth start, the three-year-old Ka Ying Rising carried topweight of 61kg (134.5 pounds) against older horses, drew the widest gate of 11, and scored a half a length win over six furlongs.

“It’s very hard for three-year-olds to give older horses weight, and he absolutely trotted up, easing down, and nearly breaking the course record,” Hayes said. “I thought, ‘You have to be very special to do that’. And then here we are ten months later, still undefeated.

“I always knew he was good but not special. From that point on I knew he was special.”

Ka Ying Rising’s specialness has some judges already reaching for very special comparisons, to the 25-from-25 Black Caviar, or to Winx, who won her last 33 straight. Hyperbole and recency bias can distort many a picture, but that Timeform rating adds clarity.

Ka Ying Rising winning the Hong Kong Sprint in DecemberCredit: Getty Images

“When horses get ten straight wins, they’re in rarified air,” Hayes told Australian media late last week, a couple of days after Ka Ying Rising arrived at Sydney’s international quarantine track, Canterbury, for his first overseas mission.

“To have a horse who can be compared with Black Caviar, or the mighty Winx, we feel very privileged.

“He’s got another season of undefeated racing to go if he’s to be compared to those horses, but at the 13 win mark he is being compared, and that’s quite an honour.”

As for Shamexpress, Ka Ying Rising is of course by far his star progeny, but far from his only quality offspring.

The now 16-year-old has 15 stakes winners from 234 runners at 6.4 per cent, with ten of those in New Zealand.

He has a second elite victor in Coventina Bay, who, showing her sire’s versatility, has won twice at the top level in New Zealand over ten furlongs. Shamexpress is also the sire of smart Australian mare Grinzinger Belle, who’s won two Group 2s and two Group 3s in Melbourne, and fetch $A1.45m as the 11th top lot at this year’s Inglis Chairman’s broodmare sale.

Shamexpress is, naturally, well liked in Hong Kong, where he has eight winners from 14 runners, including his one very special stakes victor.

Ka Ying Rising’s success has prompted a spike in his sire’s mare bookings - from 53 in 2023 to 98 last year, and an expected 100-plus this spring.

“He’s done a great job from a small amount of progeny,” Schick says of Shamexpress, one of seven stallions at Windsor Park. “Ka Ying Rising is obviously a big help, but he’s produced a bunch of other stakes winners as well.

“Obviously, we’d love to have more numbers with him. We’d like to be able to say you can do different things to help his fertility, but over the years you find most sub-fertile stallions - they are what they are.

“We just make sure the mares are close to ovulation when they go to him, but we haven’t been able to make massive inroads into it.”

Missy Moo got lucky - spectacularly - but sadly had only one more foal before a hip issue linked to her crippling arthritis led to her being euthanised. That foal, Ka Ying Glory, by another Windsor Park stallion in Turn Me Loose, is also trained by David Hayes and has a Hong Kong placing among three starts.

As to exactly why her mating with Shamexpress worked, there’s a few things going on in Ka Ying Rising’s pedigree.

Shamexpress has nicked well from limited opportunities with mares by Per Incanto, the American-bred son of Street Cry who starred on the tracks of Italy, and who’s known at Little Avondale as either the Italian Stallion or Magnum, from his initials of PI.

To date, Shamexpress only has three offspring from mares by that burgeoning broodmare sire. All are winners, and two are stakes winners, with Ka Ying Rising joined by Group 2 Wellington Guineas victor Shamus.

Further back, Ka Ying Rising boasts a dash of in-breeding to warm Kiwi hearts in a 5m x 4f of legendary New Zealand sire Sir Tristram, coming in strong via Shamexpress’s second damsire Grosvenor, and Missy Moo’s second dam Her Dynasty.

Going one generation further back reveals a tasty 6f, 6m x 6f, 6m of Sir Tristram’s sire Sir Ivor, via Foreign Courier and Sir Tristam in Shamexpress’s female half, and with daughter Water Frolic - Per Incanto’s third dam - adding to that female line of Sir Tristram in Missy Moo’s half.

Outstanding American broodmare Somethingroyal is at 8m, 6m, 8m x 8m, 7m, four times through Sir Gaylord but once through Secretariat, in the sire’s half.

Blue hen Natalma is there five times in the sixth and seventh removes, four times through Northern Dancer but also via daughter Raise The Standard, the second dam of Per Incanto’s grandsire Machiavellian.

Another key broodmare, Nogara, appears 12 times in the eighth and ninth generations, 11 through Nearco and once through her lesser known son Niccolo Dellarca.

Influential stallion Buckpasser is at 6f x 7f, 6f, the first two via the duplication of his daughter Sex Appeal and that mare’s son Try My Best, and the third through another daughter in Numbered Account.

Buckpasser’s presence brings a 9f x 9f duplication of his third dam, the great French 1920s mare La Troienne, while another key matriarch, 1950s US mare Lalun, is at 7m, 8m x 7m.

“When good horses like this come along,” says Schick, “you can’t always work out exactly how that dice is rolled. But Shamexpress does seem to be working well with Per Incanto mares.

“Missy Moo had plenty of ability, and so did Shamexpress. Still, I don’t think anyone thinks they’re going to breed a world champion - especially not with their first go at breeding.”

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