Shane Dye ranks Ka Ying Rising among racing's all-time greats

Ka Ying Rising is forcing racing to widen its definition of greatness, and Shane Dye is saying the quiet part out loud. The former jockey, who said he has watched racing for 56 years, ranked the Hong Kong sprinter behind only Frankel and Flightline among the horses he has seen, then went even further by calling Ka Ying Rising the best horse ever to race in Hong Kong.

That is not just praise. It is a direct challenge to the sport’s old bias against short-distance horses, the kind that treats staying stars as automatically more noble than sprinters. Dye’s case has numbers behind it. Ka Ying Rising has won 21 of 23 career starts, remains unbeaten in stakes company, and held the top spot in the first 2026 Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings at 128. By late April, the gelding had won 19 straight races and gone 784 days without tasting defeat.

The speed is real, and it has been measured again and again at Sha Tin. Ka Ying Rising first cracked the 1,200-meter record in 1:07.43 in the 2024 Jockey Club Sprint, then lowered it to 1:07.20 in the 2025 Centenary Sprint Cup, and reset it again in the 2026 Sprint Cup. No Hong Kong sprinter had previously strung together that kind of repeated, race-shaping domination at the top level. He also became the first horse to win Hong Kong’s three major Group 1 sprint races in succession.

The comparison list is stacked for a reason. Hong Kong has produced Silent Witness, Golden Sixty and Romantic Warrior, while the wider sprint conversation reaches Black Caviar and Lord Kanaloa. Silent Witness won his first 17 starts in Hong Kong sprint races and was the world’s top turf sprinter for three seasons, which stood as a gold standard for local speed. Ka Ying Rising has gone past that benchmark and done it with more sustained force.

His haul at the Hong Kong Champion Awards on July 11, 2025, told the same story. He took Hong Kong Horse of the Year, Champion Sprinter and Champion Four-Year-Old, confirming that this was no flash run of brilliance but a full-scale takeover. Trainer David Hayes has called him probably the best horse he has trained, while Zac Purton has described him as special and said after the record-breaking run that the horse was at the peak of his powers.

The next test is abroad, with another return to Australia for The Everest being targeted. If Ka Ying Rising travels the way he has raced in Hong Kong, the argument Dye started may travel with him.