Racing: The time is right for Karaka sale

The fastest breeze up horse who will be sold at Karaka.

The timing of the time could hardly have been better.

Former New Zealand galloper Ka Ying Rising announced himself as one of the most exciting sprinters in the world at Sha Tin in Hong Kong on Sunday, winning his Group 2 sprint so easily jockey Zac Purton blew a kiss to the camera, saying after he knew he had broken the track record.

Purton was right. Ka Ying Rising had jogged 1:7.43 for the 1200m, breaking Sacred Kingdom’s 1:7.50 record set in 2007.

While the time was sensational what matters more for the New Zealand thoroughbred industry is the (NZ) suffix next to his name, reminding owners and trainers heading to this week’s Ready To Run sale at Karaka what they are shopping for.

Ka Ring Rising wasn’t a graduate of New Zealand Bloodstock’s Ready To Run sale but that matters little, he is Kiwi-bred and serves as the perfectly-timed reminder of what New Zealand provides: fast horses that are tough enough to handle Hong Kong.

He comes hard on the heels of all-time HK champion Golden Sixty, who was sold at a Karaka Ready To Run sale, as was Lucky Sweynesse as well as an almost weekly string of New Zealand-bred or sold winners.

Buyers who race in Hong Kong helped boost last year’s Ready To Run sale to record levels and most of them plus more will be at Karaka for the two days of selling starting at 11am today.

Many didn’t arrive down until Monday but plenty of Australians were there before them, the greatest of them all Chris Waller joined by the likes of Joe Pride, who purchased Ceolwulf at this sale for $170,000 two years ago and trained him to win both the A$5million King Charles and A$1.5million Epsom this spring.

The Australian buying bench could be stronger than last year as recent results for horses like Mr Brightside, Antino, Warmonger and of course Ceolwulf are impossible to ignore, especially as Karaka is considered the best value buying in Australasia.

What overseas buyers will find when they arrive is the strongest Ready To Run catalogue put together in New Zealand, with stock of champion stallions like Frankel, I Am Invicible, Zoustar, Written Tycoon, Wootten Bassett and the local King Of Karaka yearling sales in Savabeel.

Many of those are stallions rarely represented at a Ready To Run sales but with local vendors having benefited from strong sales in the past few years they have invested in better bred stock and the entire standard has lifted. That breeding depth and two days of breeze ups at Te Rapa last month that saw fast times, headlined by a dazzling 9.97 for a colt by I Am Invicible out of Group 1-winning mare Shillelagh, suggest this week’s sale could even threaten the heights of last year.

Coverage of the sale is on Sky Channel 64 and New Zealand Bloodstock’s website and Facebook page.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.