Hong Kong: All-time leading money earner Romantic Warrior retired

Romantic Warrior, one of the great racehorses of the modern era, has been retired, the Hong Kong Jockey Club announced Wednesday.

The HKJC issued a release on Aug. 25 that reported potential problems in a front-leg joint that required further scanning and diagnosis, so the announcement did not come as a surprise.

Romantic Warrior underwent surgery in May 2025 to insert a screw into his left-front fetlock but returned to win six races in a row, including four Group 1s, during the 2025-26 Hong Kong racing season. That brought his career record -- his final record -- to a remarkable 31-24-5-0. Romantic Warrior is retired with about $35.5 million earnings, more than any other racehorse.

Romantic Warrior suffered his first defeat – finishing fourth -- after five wins to begin his career when saddled with post 14 in the Hong Kong Classic Cup in February 2022. The only other race in which he finished worse than second was the Turnbull Stakes in October 2023 at Flemington Racecourse in Australia, and three weeks later Romantic Warrior won the Cox Plate.

While owners of Hong Kong standouts that immediately preceded him, Golden Sixty in particular, declined to leave the friendly confines of Sha Tin Racecourse, Romantic Warrior’s owner, Peter Lau Pak Fai, and trainer, Clifford Shum, sent their superstar out into the wider world. The Australia adventure marked his first shipping experience, and after winning the Group 1 Cox Plate, Romantic Warrior returned home to win the second of his four Group 1 Hong Kong Cups, Hong Kong’s richest race.

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In June 2024, after the Australian trip, the Hong Kong Cup, and the second of his four wins in the Group 1 QE II Cup, Romantic Warrior went to Japan and captured the Group 1 Yasuda Kinen. The following winter, Shum took Romantic Warrior to the Middle East, where the gelding won the Group 1 Jebel Hatta at Meydan Racecourse as a prep for the $20 million Saudi Cup. That race, Romantic Warrior’s only dirt start, was an epic battle with Forever Young. Romantic Warrior, perhaps committed too soon to the lead, was run down late and lost by a neck to the horse who would win the 2025 Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Owing in part to his surgery, Romantic Warrior stayed in Hong Kong for his last form cycle, his final race a half-length victory in the Standard Chartered Champions and Chater Cup that made him just the third Hong Kong Triple Crown winner of the last 33 years.

Only twice did Romantic Warrior race over a distance as long as the Champions and Chater Cup’s 1 1/2 miles. He won three six-furlong and one seven-furlong contests to start his career; his ideal distance might have been the 1 1/8 miles he got in the Saudi Cup, though Romantic Warrior proved devastatingly effective between one mile and 1 1/4 miles. After the retirement of Golden Sixty, who beat him twice early in 2023, he became the dominant force in Hong Kong racing.

Bred in Ireland, Romantic Warrior, now 8, is by Acclamation out of Folk Melody, by Street Cry. The HKJC will hold a farewell ceremony for the gelding sometime later this racing season.

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