Timeform's highest rated horse Ka Ying Rising may not be the only headline maker at Sha Tin this weekend.
‘Where the world’s greatest meet’ is the strapline for Sunday’s Longines Hong Kong International Races – the ‘Turf World Championships’ – at Sha Tin. This year in particular, there’s some substance to that bold claim because Timeform’s highest-rated horse in the world – Ka Ying Rising – will be defending his Hong Kong Sprint title.
Twelve months ago, Ka Ying Rising capped his meteoric rise through the Hong Kong ranks with a first Group 1 win in the Hong Kong Sprint, bringing him to a wider audience, but 2025 has taken him to still greater heights. He has brushed aside his rivals in another seven races since then, extending his current winning streak to 15.
He recorded an outstanding 135 Timeform rating when giving 9 lb and a beating to the former Hong Kong Sprint winner Lucky Sweynesse in a handicap in September and matched that when landing odds of 1/20 in last month’s Group 2 Jockey Club Sprint, coasting home under regular rider Zac Purton in a time just outside his own track record (replay below). He’d first lowered the time for Sha Tin’s six furlongs in the same race in 2024 and then bettered his own record in the Centenary Sprint Cup in January.
Ka Ying Rising’s invincibility has extended beyond his own backyard in 2025 too because in October he made short work of some of Australia’s best sprinters in the Everest at Randwick in October, becoming the first overseas winner of the world’s richest turf race. In truth, the opposition wasn’t the strongest and Ka Ying Rising didn’t need to run up to his best. His chief rival on Sunday could again be Japan’s Satono Reve, though he was back in third in last year’s Hong Kong Sprint and was beaten by Ka Ying Rising again at Sha Tin in April before his good second in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot.
But Ka Ying Rising won’t be the only champion in action on Sunday who can call Sha Tin home. Ka Ying Rising might be topping the bill ratings-wise but Romantic Warrior might steal some of the headlines from him if becoming the first horse to win the same Hong Kong International race four times. Romantic Warrior won the Hong Kong Cup, the richest of the four International races, for the third year running in 2024, matching the past achievements of Good Ba Ba and Golden Sixty who were three-time winners of the Hong Kong Mile.
Romantic Warrior won his first Hong Kong Cup in 2022 in race-record time, being the first to break two minutes since it became a mile and a quarter contest. He was impressive that day, too, quickening clear to win by four and a half lengths. It was a much closer finish a year later when he was all out to hold on in a finish of short heads with Ballydoyle’s Luxembourg and Japan’s Hishi Amazon, but he had more to spare again when completing his hat-trick 12 months ago, winning easily by a length and a half from the very smart Japanese filly Liberty Island (replay below).
Romantic Warrior’s first Hong Kong Cup came with Mick Kinane among the spectators in the Sha Tin stands that day. Kinane won the Hong Kong Cup in his riding days in 2002 but now has the satisfaction of having sourced a three-time winner of the race as he bought the Irish-bred son of sprinter Acclamation for 300,000 guineas on behalf of the Hong Kong Jockey Club from Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale.
That’s not an inconsiderable sum, of course, but it pales into insignificance compared with Romantic Warrior’s lifetime prize money – currently standing at more than £21 million - which makes him the world’s leading earner of all time.
Much of that has been earned at Sha Tin where, much like Ka Ying Rising, Romantic Warrior has compiled an impressive winning sequence. His last defeat at the track came in May 2023 but he had an excuse as that was over a trip beyond his best of a mile and a half. His first major win came in the Hong Kong Derby over a mile and a quarter, and he has also won three Queen Elizabeth II Cups and a Hong Kong Gold Cup over the same trip.
But Romantic Warrior’s bank balance has also been boosted by major wins overseas. In 2023 he was a short-head winner of the Cox Plate in Australia and in 2024 he conquered Japan, winning the Yasuda Kinen over a mile. Romantic Warrior maintained his unbeaten record abroad in another jurisdiction, Dubai, on his first start of 2025 when proving much too good for the smart British-trained geldings Poker Face and Holloway Boy in the Jebel Hatta, shaving a fraction of a second off the Meydan track record for nine furlongs and recording his eighth win on the bounce.
The following month’s Saudi Cup presented Romantic Warrior with much his biggest challenge when having to prove himself as good on dirt as he was on turf. In a rare clash between two top performers on the different surfaces, Romantic Warrior made Forever Young pull out all the stops in going down by a neck as the first two pulled over ten lengths clear of the third. The Japanese winner underlined that he’s one of the world’s top dirt performers when going on to win the latest Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Back on turf at Meydan, Romantic Warrior suffered an even narrower defeat to a Japanese rival when caught on the line in the Dubai Turf by Soul Rush, runner-up in last year’s Hong Kong Mile and a leading contender for the same race again on Sunday.
After his Middle East campaign, Romantic Warrior required fetlock surgery in May which involved having a screw inserted in his near-fore joint. But after an absence of 232 days, he swept to his latest success back at Sha Tin in November when winning the Group 2 Jockey Club Cup for a record third time. He looked as good ever in fact, with regular partner James McDonald pushing him out for a length and a half victory over last year’s Hong Kong Mile winner Voyage Bubble who will be lining up against Soul Rush again.
Romantic Warrior’s trainer Danny Shum reckoned him to be 85% fit for his comeback run and was expecting him to put on 10 or 12 lb in weight ahead of his bid to make history this weekend. Joseph O’Brien runs his recent Bahrain Trophy runner-up Galen while Francis-Henri Graffard relies on smart mare Quisisana, and with the Japanese contingent not looking that strong, Romantic Warrior looks very much the one to beat once again.
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