It is what Romantic Warrior has tried, as much as what he has achieved, that makes him truly great.
Modern racing rewards caution. The trend across jurisdictions is toward managed campaigns, protected records and horses cherry-picked into races they are expected to win. Romantic Warrior has gone the other way.
A win in Sunday's Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup would complete a six-for-six season that includes the Hong Kong Triple Crown and the three middle-distance G1s on the local calendar. In most eras, that campaign alone would lock up Horse of the Year. This season, Ka Ying Rising's eight from eight — including becoming the first overseas-trained horse to win The Everest — ensures the sprinter will almost certainly claim that honor. It is a quirk of timing rather than any slight against Romantic Warrior.
What separates Romantic Warrior from so many modern champions is not just his record of 23 wins – 14 of them Group 1s – across 30 starts, or world-record earnings north of HK$271 million, it is the willingness of his connections to test the boundaries of his talent.
Romantic Warrior has won at the top level in four countries: Hong Kong, Australia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. He has raced on dirt in the Saudi Cup, losing the richest race in the world by a neck to Forever Young on a surface he had never tried before. That iconic race – ’the Rumble in Riyadh’ – was bookended by a track record win and narrow defeat in Dubai. He won a 1600-meter Yasuda Kinen in Tokyo eight months after a 2040m Cox Plate in Melbourne, with three tough wins at home in between.
That unparalleled range and durability are underrated attributes. It helps that he is a gelding with no residual breeding rights to protect, but the ambition of his campaigns owes as much to the instincts of trainer Danny Shum and owner Peter Lau as to his biological status.
The Triple Crown itself speaks to Hong Kong's respect for versatility. Established in the 1991-92 season, it asks a horse to win at 1600 meters, 2000 meters and 2400 meters in the same campaign, against all comers. River Verdon was the first and for three decades the only horse to complete it, in 1993-94, when the final leg was 2200m. Voyage Bubble joined him last season. Romantic Warrior would be the third.
Hong Kong has often produced horses that defy easy categorization. The best historical example might be Quicken Away, Peter Ng Bik-kuen's popular gray of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
A two-time Horse of the Year, Quicken Away remains the only horse to win the Chairman's Sprint Prize three times, in 1989, 1990 and 1991. But it was his versatility that made him extraordinary by any era's standards: in 1990, he won the Champions & Chater Cup over 1800 meters and stepped back to 1200 meters six days later to crush his rivals by five lengths in the Chairman's Sprint Prize.He also won the QEII Cup.
That willingness to toggle between sprints and staying tests – albeit in an era before mega prizemoney, Group classifications and international rankings elevated the stakes of defeat – made him genuinely special. Only Exultant has matched his feat of winning both the QEII Cup and the Champions & Chater in the same year since the Champions & Chater was moved to its current distance.
Romantic Warrior's scope is even greater. If he finishes Sunday's 2400 meters with his head in front, it will be the crowning act of a career that has refused the easy path at every turn. In this risk averse age of caution, that matters as much as the silverware
