Kingdom follows in the footprints of Witness
Who thought we'd ever see a horse draw favourable comparisons with the champion Silent Witness? And even if we dared to hope, who could have imagined it happening so soon?
Sacred Kingdom's extraordinary win on May 1, in equal course record time of 1:07.8 for 1,200 metres, has become an enormous discussion point. The Encosta de Lago three-year-old is unbeaten in five starts and has taken the step into Class One with absolute ease.
Silent Witness also won his first five starts, but the most obvious thing about His Highness, the Witness, was he added another 12 successive wins to that opening tally, making it 17 on the trot before fate came knocking in the Champions Mile in May 2005.
To put Silent Witness' performance in a more historical context, the last top-class animal to have been unbeaten in 16 starts anywhere in the world was a blood relative, his great great grandsire Ribot, the Italian superstar who retired unbeaten after winning his second Arc de Triomphe in Paris in 1956.
Only two horses in North America had won 16 in succession at top level, the most recent being champion middle-distance galloper Cigar in the mid-1990s. But before Cigar, you had to go back to the 1948 triple crown winner Citation and that's the full set - they didn't make any more.
So Silent Witness is the kind of horse that comes along once in a half century. He was the world's top-rated turf sprinter in 2003, 2004 and 2005. He was twice Hong Kong Horse of the Year and also Hong Kong's most popular horse, as voted by members of the public. He went on to win an 18th race, the Group One Sprinters Stakes at Nakayama in October 2005, before succumbing to a virus that brought his winning days to an end.
Jockeys and trainers often say it's impossible to compare horses of different eras because of the lack of head-to-head competition. But speed ratings make mathematical comparisons not only possible but highly valid.
Our own speed ratings for the first five starts of Silent Witness and Sacred Kingdom show the young upstart is very much the real deal, but must still defer to the retired king
With every point of speed rating equalling a half length, you can see Sacred Kingdom is now only a half length behind where Silent Witness was after start number five, back in mid-2003.
The following autumn, Silent Witness won his first Group One Hong Kong Sprint and the same agenda will probably await Sacred Kingdom.
After winning the Sha Tin Vase, with the feather weight of 113 pounds, Silent Witness boasted a 117 speed rating, and ultimately went 122 in the Hong Kong Sprint with weight-for-age of 126 pounds.
For Sacred Kingdom, the same sort of five-point projection is on the cards. And a rating of 121 would make the Ricky Yiu Poon-fie-trained gelding very hard to beat indeed.
At this point it becomes even more interesting because Yiu has said, almost from day one, that Sacred Kingdom is the best horse he's trained since the legendary Fairy King Prawn.
Fairy King Prawn won the 1999 Hong Kong Sprint, ridden by Steven King and rating - you guessed it - 121.
Raw, untapped potential is one thing, converting it to a record like that of Silent Witness is another thing entirely, but as beginnings go, unless you're Silent Witness himself, they don't get any better.
