A look through the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s horse records will often reveal the word “Gelding” under the sex of a horse. A gelding is simply a male horse that has been castrated. In fact, many of the finest racehorses in Hong Kong history have been geldings, with top-class performers emerging over sprint, mile and middle-distance races. Their achievements are clear proof that being a gelding is certainly no barrier to racing success.
One recent example is John Size-trained Jewellery Sky. According to Hong Kong Jockey Club records, Jewellery Sky is an Australian-bred gelding by The Autumn Sun who came to Hong Kong as a Privately Purchased Griffin. He has so far recorded five wins and one second from eight starts, earning HK$6.96 million in prize money and reaching a rating of 95. He was also nominated for the Most Improved Horse award for the 2024/25 season. Having progressed rapidly through the lower grades before establishing himself at a higher level, he has become one of the more notable emerging geldings in Hong Kong in recent seasons.
Looking further back, Hong Kong racing has produced no shortage of outstanding geldings. Silent Witness was also a gelding, winning 18 of his 29 career starts and even travelling to Japan to score on the international stage. His famous sequence of 17 consecutive victories remains one of the most memorable records in Hong Kong racing history.
Golden Sixty subsequently took the achievements of Hong Kong geldings to an even higher level. According to Hong Kong Jockey Club records, he won 26 of his 31 starts and accumulated HK$167.17 million in prize money. During his remarkable career, he won ten Group 1 races and was crowned Hong Kong Horse of the Year for three consecutive seasons. Although there was no future stallion career awaiting him, his achievements on the racecourse alone were enough to establish him as one of the most important horses in Hong Kong racing history.
Hong Kong’s two reigning Horses of the Year, Romantic Warrior and Ka Ying Rising, are also geldings. Romantic Warrior has so far won 24 of his 31 starts, with his total prize money listed by the Hong Kong Jockey Club at approximately HK$288.7 million. Ka Ying Rising, meanwhile, has won 21 of his 23 starts and reached a rating of 142. Remarkably, the pair were jointly crowned Hong Kong Horse of the Year at the 2025/26 Champion Awards, marking the first time in Hong Kong racing history that the title had been shared. In other words, the two horses currently standing at the very top of Hong Kong racing are both geldings.
So why are racehorses gelded? One important consideration is management. As male horses mature, temperament, concentration and other behavioural factors can sometimes make training and everyday handling more difficult, and gelding may therefore be considered for certain horses. However, castration should never be regarded as a simple formula for making a horse faster, nor does it mean that every horse will automatically improve afterwards. Every horse differs in terms of physique, temperament, maturity and training circumstances, so the effects can vary considerably. The Hong Kong Jockey Club also records gelding operations in the publicly available veterinary histories of individual horses, reflecting its place as an established part of racehorse management.
From Silent Witness and Golden Sixty to today’s Romantic Warrior and Ka Ying Rising, and now the emerging Jewellery Sky, Hong Kong racing history provides plenty of evidence that losing the ability to breed does not mean losing racing value. For racing fans, what ultimately matters is not whether the horse is listed as a colt, horse or gelding, but how fast it can run, how far it can go, and how long it can remain at the top of its game.