Famed as the only horse to have beaten champion sprinter Ka Ying Rising, Wunderbar (128lb) catapulted John Size closer to a record-extending 13th Hong Kong trainers’ championship with a devastating return to form at Sha Tin on Saturday (14 June).
Twice victorious over Ka Ying Rising in the pair’s three-year-old season, Wunderbar had bone fragments removed from a knee in January, 2024 – a day after his second triumph over the horse now acclaimed as the world’s highest-rated sprinter – and has endured a rollercoaster since.
As Ka Ying Rising advanced to a perfect, eight-win 2024/25 season while claiming four Group 1s, Wunderbar has taken a less celebrated path, notching a pair of early-season wins before finishing out of the placings at his past three runs.
Ridden conservatively by Hugh Bowman in the HK$2.84 million Class 2 HKU Business School And Faculty Of Engineering Handicap (1200m), the chestnut showed his quality after settling midfield in the 11-horse field behind Bottomuptogether (133lb) before sweeping through a gap in the straight to down stablemate Raging Blizzard (135lb) and Harmony N Blessed (115lb) in 1m 08.12s.
The gelding’s seventh victory in 12 starts propelled Size to 63 wins for the season, nine clear of David Hayes (54) with only eight meetings left in the campaign, and presented more evidence of the master horseman’s elite craftmanship.
“He’s been over-racing a little bit and I gave him a break and that didn’t work, so I had to do something else. Then he had a couple of trials and was fine. He didn’t race for four months last time fresh and this time he was perfect – right tempo and everything went well for him,” Size said.