Romantic Warrior

and ready-to-run, or what you would call breeze-up horses into Hong Kong, is a crucial, crucial component of the New Zealand bloodstock industry.

When you can say we've sold you maybe, maybe the best horse Hong Kong has ever had alongside Romantic Warrior and Golden 60, who was also sold out in New Zealand sales.

When you can say that, Nick, that means a lot more than any pamphlets or advertising you can do for the ready-to-run sale, which comes up here in November.

Michael, thanks so much.

At TRC and global rankings, we always had him on a big map to start with.

Just having a look at your latest global rankings, you pressed the red button this morning to release this week.

Kaiying Rising, Romantic Warrior now retired, of course, in the two spot.

Darryl's a big climber back up to three.

Ed Sadler has all of the news wrapped up.

And, of course, it focuses on Hong Kong, where the announcement of the superstar romantic warrior's retirement was a sad announcement yesterday.

Most people have been hoping he would fare well.

His loyal fan base at home in the December international meeting, but injury.

It's the Thursday edition of The Verdict Podcast.

Placing their opinion on the line, it's The Verdict.

It is Romantic Warrior taking the lead.

Half a length over Voyage Bubble.

And I use the word great advisedly here.

Romantic Warrior, eight rising nine.

A horse with 15 victories at the highest level to his name.

24 wins from 31 lifetime starts.

And the head of racing products at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Greg Carpenter, has been spending a little time with us this morning to reflect on what's been an amazing career.

Hi, Nick.

Let me say first and foremost, when a moment like this comes to a champion racehorse, when they are finally retired, there's always a tinge of sadness, but I think we have a great deal to celebrate with the career of Romantic Warrior and what he has done, not only, I think, just for Kong racing but for world racing.

The campaigns that the trainer Danny Shum and the owner Peter Lau took in overseas jurisdictions in the southern hemisphere in Australia, in Japan and also the Gulf states was something that we hadn't seen undertaken by a horse from Hong Kong before.

Yep.

Well, he's, uh, one of the veteran horses around the world that captures the imagination of the, the public, isn't he? And another one is Romantic Warrior, and the Hong Kong Jockey Club put out a release yesterday afternoon just advising everyone that, "Consistent with the club's world-class procedures for the care of our racehorses, Romantic Warrior has undergone detailed physical examinations, including the use of state-of-the-art imaging equipment of our veterinary hospital.

This proactive screening has revealed a change in one of the horse's joints that requires further detailed assessment by the veterinary team." So hopefully nothing too serious there with Romantic Warrior, and they'll do that further testing and, uh, it comes up clean and, uh, he can continue to race on.

But that, that is a significant update regarding one of the best horses in the world.

Well, that does sound concerning.

And he's been doing this for, what, three seasons now.

Is he going to be as good this season as a six-year-old going on? through this next campaign, is he gonna be as dominant and as brilliant as he was or will we start to see a drop off? It may be that he can keep going on like Romantic Warrior and do it for another couple of seasons.

But there's always that niggle in your mind that he's been winning so many races, is there gonna be a drop off at some point? Is something gonna happen that affects him on that travel to Australia where he's not quite at his peak? Is something gonna occur that just knocks him and he becomes vulnerable?

Well, we've already seen the first trial back, this preparation in Hong Kong last week, and You know, we've got the eternal optimist, David Hayes, the trainer of Kane Rising.

Obviously, we all were there and watched it, or watched it on TV.

I was there, and it was an incredible night.

The tension before the race with those two horses, Forever Young, Romantic Warrior, that build up everyone, the anticipation, and then the way that race was run, it really was an epic.

It was one of the races of this century.