Romantic Warrior was the big winner at the Jockey Club’s Champion Awards on Friday night, taking home the coveted Horse of the Year crown.

The six-year-old was rewarded for his unprecedented season that saw him land five consecutive elite-level wins in three different countries.

Romantic Warrior created history at Moonee Valley in October by winning the Cox Plate (2,040m) and capped his campaign with a sublime victory in the Yasuda Kinen (1,600m) at Tokyo racecourse last month.

With three Group One triumphs on home soil in the Hong Kong Cup, Gold Cup and QE II Cup sandwiched in between, he pocketed HK$67,561,306 million in prize money and surged to the top handful of horses in the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings.

The Danny Shum Chap-shing-trained superstar landed his first Horse of the Year gong while taking home the Champion Middle-Distance Horse crown for the third straight season.

It was not to be for Golden Sixty in the prestigious Horse of the Year Award, but Hong Kong’s hero did not go home empty-handed as he edged Romantic Warrior in the Champion Miler category.

In what may have been his final campaign, Golden Sixty secured the award for the fourth year in a row with his spine-tingling win in December’s Group One Hong Kong Mile.

The eight-year-old ended his injury-affected season with a gallant fourth on yielding ground in April’s Group One Champions Mile, taking his prize money tally to HK$167,170,600.

California Spangle lowered Golden Sixty’s colours in the Hong Kong Mile in 2022 and it was Tony Cruz’s versatile six-year-old who collected this season’s Champion Sprinter Award.

California Spangle went from pillar to post to produce a brave win in the Group One Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup (1,400m) before successfully completing an audacious overseas raid on the Group One Al Quoz Sprint (1,200m) in Dubai.

He was always doing enough in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup to fend off the fast-finishing challenge of Pierre Ng Pang-chi’s Galaxy Patch, who took home the Champion Four-Year-Old Award.

Galaxy Patch’s impressive season included six wins, two of which came at Group Three level, a runner-up effort in the Hong Kong Derby and over HK$22 million in prize money.

The title of Champion Griffin was never in doubt, with David Hayes’ Ka Ying Rising a deserving winner after capping his breakthrough season with a commanding Group Three win.

The Champion Griffin category is open to new imports in the current season who arrived in Hong Kong unraced, and who were aged either two or three on the date of the first Hong Kong race meeting of the season.

Ka Ying Rising returned five victories from his seven outings and rose 59 points to end the campaign on a mark of 111, earning the title for Most Improved Horse in the process.

In the remaining awards, Zac Purton received Champion Jockey spoils, Five G Patch picked up the prize in an underwhelming Champion Stayer category and Angus Chung Yik-lai collected the Tony Cruz Award as leading local jockey.

Elsewhere on Friday, the Jockey Club confirmed there will be a new face on next season’s riding roster after they granted 25-year-old Britney Wong a licence from the beginning of the 2024-25 campaign.

Wong, who notched 50 wins from over 600 races in Australia, will be the first female apprentice to ride in Hong Kong in seven years.