Romantic Warrior already belongs in the pantheon of Hong Kong-based racehorses, a 16-time winner from 21 starts, half those victories at the Group 1 level, two of them abroad, in the Cox Plate in Australia and the Yasuda Kinen in Japan. Sunday at Sha Tin Racecourse, Romantic Warrior can do something no horse based in Hong Kong or anywhere else has done – win the Hong Kong Cup for a third time.
If Romantic Warrior’s prep race for the feature on the Hong Kong International Races program serves as a true marker, they won’t be beating him. Racing for the first time since June, Romantic Warrior gave five pounds to 10 rivals Nov. 17 in the Group 2 Jockey Club Cup and absolutely steamrolled them. He not only won that 2,000-meter contest – same distance as the $5.14 million Hong Kong Cup – by more than four lengths, jockey James McDonald rode the 6-year-old gelding like his mount was having a canter through Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island.
“He’s just a perfect racehorse. Gate speed, sustained speed, doesn’t matter whether it’s wet, dry, fast tempo, slow tempo, he’s pretty much unflappable over a mile and a quarter,” McDonald told Hong Kong Jockey Club publicity earlier this week.
The Cup goes as the last of the four Group 1s and, for East Coasters in America, has a brutal post time, 3:42 a.m. Preceding it on Hong Kong’s most important race day are the Hong Kong Mile, the Hong Kong Sprint, and the Hong Kong Vase, all four races populated by a large number of overseas shippers from Japan and Europe.
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Romantic Warrior takes a starring role. A gelding by Acclamation, Romantic Warrior was purchased as an unraced horse in Ireland and has been guided through an epic three-year Hong Kong run by trainer Danny Shum. But for a four-wide uncovered trip in the Hong Kong Classic Cup, Romantic Warrior would have captured all three legs of the 4-year-old Classic Series in 2022, stepping out of age-restricted racing after the series to win the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes by two lengths.
That raised Romantic Warrior’s Hong Kong rating to 102. Now, it sits at 132, about as high as the handicapping pyramid rises.
Romantic Warrior won the 2022 Hong Kong Cup by 4 1/2 lengths, and though he lost three of his next four starts during the 2022-23 season, two of those defeats were second-place finishes behind the great Golden Sixty, the other a nose loss over 1 1/2 miles.
The owners of Hong Kong stars – Golden Sixty comes to mind – often are loath to race abroad, but Romantic Warrior’s 2023-24 campaign centered not only around the top 1 1/4-mile races in Hong Kong, but the Cox Plate and the Yasuda Kinen. Mission accomplished all around. In fact, the low point of last season came in the Hong Kong Cup, with Romantic Warrior, feeling the effect of his two-start Australian campaign in October, hanging on by a nose over Luxembourg. Romantic Warrior at the nadir of his powers still proved good enough for his second Hong Kong Cup, and all signs point to him peaking Sunday.
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Luxembourg returns to Hong Kong but races Sunday in the 1 1/2-mile Vase, leaving two fillies, Wingspan and Content, as trainer Aidan O’Brien’s hopes to land his first Cup. Both horses last raced at Del Mar, Wingspan’s fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Turf a superior performance to Content’s sixth in the Filly and Mare Turf. Content, the mount of Ryan Moore, might better suit 2,000 meters than Wingspan.
Romantic Warrior’s main rival probably comes not from Ireland but Japan in the form of 4-year-old filly Liberty Island. Liberty Island at the peak of her powers finished second behind Equinox, probably the best grass horse in the world during 2023, in the Japan Cup two Novembers ago. In March, she was a fine third behind Rebel’s Romance in the Sheema Classic in Dubai, but her lone start since, in the Japan Cup last month, ended in a disappointing 13th-place finish. Liberty Island obviously can show improvement. It will have to be massive to knock Romantic Warrior off his perch.
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