Is Forever Young Running for the Money Record? It Depends Who’s Counting

By ITM Staff

If Forever Young wins the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland on October 31, he will collect a $3.64 million winner’s check and become the richest racehorse in history. Or he will fall about $900,000 short. Both statements are true. It depends on how you count Romantic Warrior’s money.

Hong Kong’s champion retired in September as the world’s leading earner. Count only the prize money he won on the track, converted to U.S. dollars at the exchange rate on each race day, and he banked $35.47 million. Add the bonuses the Hong Kong Jockey Club paid him on top, as the Club’s own official total does, and the figure rises to $36.94 million.

Forever Young stands at $32.3 million after his Jockey Club Gold Cup win on September 18. A Classic victory would take him to about $36.0 million: past the first number, short of the second.

The two counts

All figures in U.S. dollars, each race converted at that day’s exchange rate.

The prize-money-only count is the one most American outlets use. Daily Racing Form put Romantic Warrior’s career earnings at “about $35.5 million” when he retired, and Brisnet wrote after the Gold Cup that a Classic win “would propel him past Romantic Warrior.” The bonus-inclusive count follows the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s own total of HK$288.7 million; BloodHorse converted that to “about US$36.85 million.”

Where the gap comes from

The difference is HK$11.5 million (about $1.47 million) in bonuses the Hong Kong Jockey Club paid Romantic Warrior on top of his purse earnings, and counts in his official total:

• HK$10 million Triple Crown bonus, for sweeping the Stewards’ Cup, Hong Kong Gold Cup and Champions & Chater Cup in 2026. He collected it with his final start, the Champions & Chater on May 24.
• HK$900,000 top-up bonus after his Queen Elizabeth II Cup win in April 2022.
• HK$600,000 bonus for winning his first Class 3 race, in December 2021.

The Triple Crown bonus alone, about $1.28 million at the day’s rate, is bigger than the margin either way. Count it and Romantic Warrior stays on top after a Forever Young Classic win; leave it out and he doesn’t.

There is a case for both. The Jockey Club counts bonuses because they were paid for racing results. DRF’s figure leaves them out, and Forever Young’s own total is purse money only.

Does the exchange rate matter?

Hardly. We converted every race at the rate on the day it was run, which is the fair way to value money won in different currencies over five years.

For Romantic Warrior it barely moves the needle. Most of his money was won in Hong Kong dollars, and the Hong Kong dollar has been pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1983, trading between HK$7.75 and HK$7.85. Whether you convert on race day or today, HK$288.7 million comes to between $36.8 million and $37.3 million.

For Forever Young it moves even less. All but $1.96 million of his earnings were paid in U.S. dollars, in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and the U.S. His six wins in Japan were worth ¥294.2 million. Converted race by race that is $1.96 million, and the published $32,313,590 total treats it as $1.91 million. The difference is about $52,000.

Other counts produce other leaderboards. IdolHorse’s rich list converts each year’s earnings at the January 1 rate; in February it had Romantic Warrior on $32.8 million and Forever Young on $29.5 million, before Romantic Warrior’s last three wins and Forever Young’s Dubai World Cup second.

How each built his fortune

The two took very different routes to the top. Romantic Warrior earned his steadily, mostly at home: 31 starts, 24 wins, and Hong Kong’s biggest races year after year. Forever Young earned his in a handful of enormous paydays: 16 starts, 12 wins, and more than 60% of his career earnings from two Saudi Cups.

Romantic Warrior’s biggest paydays (race-day rates)

He won the Hong Kong Cup four years running, the QEII Cup four times, and abroad took the Cox Plate in Australia (A$3 million, about $1.90 million) and the Yasuda Kinen in Japan (about $1.17 million).

Forever Young’s biggest paydays

The richest single day for Romantic Warrior was the one Forever Young beat him: his $3.5 million for second in the 2025 Saudi Cup was the biggest check of his career.

What it means on October 31, and in February

A Classic win settles the argument only on the narrower count. On prize money alone, Forever Young would become the richest racehorse ever with a margin of roughly half a million dollars. On the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s count, he would still trail by about $930,000.

That makes February interesting. The Saudi Cup, worth $10 million to the winner in each of Forever Young’s two victories, would put him clear on any count. Another trip to Riyadh would also be a shot at a third straight Saudi Cup.

Until then, the honest answer to “Is Forever Young running for the money record?” is yes, and also not quite. Expect to see both claims made on Breeders’ Cup night.

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