This weekend’s dominant display from the best racehorse in the world, Ka Ying Rising at Sha Tin (who won his 21st race in a row), has had the desired effect on the sport’s enthusiasts. It has got us all talking about the horses. That is always where the main focus of attention should be – on the horse. These are the stars, the athletes should be the most loved and looked after – especially after giving us so much throughout their careers.

 

A random AI graphic I spotted on social media relating to the fastest racehorse performances over 1200 metres (with no context provided and a few errors to boot) got me pulling out the old results from 2011 at Flemington to see just how fast the super mare Black Caviar was back in the day. Well, the answer was very fast! Let’s look at the graphic below first:

 

 

The first thing to notice is that races are timed differently in Japan i.e. not from a standing start when the stalls open. Also, how fast or slow racing conditions on the day were is not factored in to the above either. That’s where Starsoftheclock comes in…with a going allowance correction established from how other races were run on the day we can adjust these winning times and turn them into a timefigure.

The two interesting winning times for our experiment are Ka Ying Rising’s 1.06.11 from this weekend at Sha Tin, and Black Caviar’s 1.07.14 which was actually recorded as 1.07.36 when winning the Group 1 Lexus Newmarket handicap on the 12th March 2011 at Flemington.

There were three races run on the straight course at Flemington back in 2011. One was for two-year-olds and the other two for older than juvenile horses. I used the two older horse races to establish a going allowance. Panipique won race 2 over 1100 metres beating my class par by 0.19 lengths per mile and Black Caviar won race 6 over 1200 metres beating my class par by 7.75 lengths per mile. That gave me a going allowance on the straight track on the day of fast by 3.97 lengths per mile (7.75 +0.19 = 7.94 divided by 2). That brought Black Caviar’s raw 1200 metre raw timefigure of 124.75 down to a (120.78) timefigure. Almost four lengths per mile faster than the standard Group 1 timefigure of (117). The race can be viewed below:

 

The important thing to note when track records are broken is that they usually fall when conditions are on the fast side. This is what we witnessed on Sunday at Sha Tin as the round track was riding 9.23 lengths per mile faster than my standard times. Ka Ying Rising recorded a 1200 metres raw timefigure of 129.45 with conditions on the day reducing this to a (120.22) timefigure. It should be noted that Ka Ying Rising carried 7lb more than Black Caviar on the day…Ka Ying Rising’s victory can be seen below:

 

 

Both superstars are so far ahead of their rivals that they didn’t need to be fully extended – making it very difficult to say where the ceiling is for both performances. However, we can now see from the adjusted winning times that both performances at the weights are very similar. Haven’t we been lucky to live in an era where we have seen two absolute freaks of nature! The table below puts the two performances together:

 

Horse	Date	Distance/Course	Weight	Winning Time	Raw Timefigure	Going Allowance	Final Timefigure
Ka Ying Rising	6th Sept 2026	1200m – Sha Tin	9st 9lb	1.06.11	129.45	[- 9.23]	120.22
Black Caviar	12th Mar 2011	1200m – Flemington	9st 2lb	1.07.36	124.75	[-3.97]	120.78

 

Until the next timefigure analysis.

Stay Lucky,

Graham