FOREVER YOUNG CONFIRMS HIS CHAMPION STATUS WITH ANOTHER ROUSING SAUDI CUP VICTORY

By Graham Potter | Sunday, February 15, 2026

The mighty Forever Young completed an historic Saudi Cup double when he outgunned a very game Nysos at the King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Riyadh on Saturday.

Forever Young is the first runner to win the Saudi Cup on two occasions with Saturday’s win in the US$20 contest putting his name in the record books as a back-to-back winner of the Saudi Cup following his thrilling success in 2025 when he beat Romantic Warrior in one of the most intense finishes of the season.

After contemplating a rematch, the connections of Romantic Warrior decided to stay at home in Hong Kong this year and tackle the Hong Kong Triple Crown (he has already won the first leg), so this year the role of the pretender to Forever Young’s crown fell to the Bob Baffert trained Nysos, the 2025 Group1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner who brought a race record of seven wins from eight starts into the Saudi Cup.

While Nysos lived up to that top challenger billing with a bold effort, the son of Nyquist came up a length short of taming Forever Young, with the reigning Saudi Cup champion prevailing in yet another pressurised finish which saw these two main protagonists locked together in a punishing stride for stride battle for supremacy between the 300m mark and the 150m mark at which stage Forever Young edged into the lead by a length, an advantage he held to the line in spite of Nysos continuing to fight every inch of the way.

While you cannot take anything at all away from the win, there was a moment shortly after straightening which clearly played out in favour of Forever Young, who looked to be at some risk approaching the home turn when racing in fifth place on the rail, close enough, but behind a line of horses which included Nysos, ahead and to Forever Young’s outside, with the Baffert runner perfectly placed at that stage to launch his final challenge.

And launch he did, three wide, but, at the same time, a critical moment of the race arrived as a wide gap opened up along the rail, inviting Forever Young into clear galloping room without ever having to go around a horse.

That bit of critical good fortune aside, Forever Young still had it all to do in the run home, with his concentrated battle with Nysos testing Forever Young’s champion status to the full in a finish between two exceptional horses befitting of a race of the Saudi Cup stature.
Forever Young, who will now head to the Dubai World Cup in March, is trained by Yoshito Yahagi for owner Susumu Fujita and was ridden by Ryusei Sakai.