Derby winner Hitotsu a toast to the rise of the Japanese thoroughbred Down Under
‘We tried to buy a few Maurices at Easter this year, but the market was very strong on them’
“Since the turn of the century, Japanese horses have won the biggest races in every corner of the globe: Hong Kong, Dubai, Europe, America and Australia. Every major centre of racing has felt the force of Japanese raiders.”
So said Peter Donegan when narrating the 2017 Arrowfield Stud documentary Global Impact: The Rise of the Japanese Thoroughbred which was commissioned by the Hunter Valley farm to help inform Australiasian breeders about the sublime merits of the sirepower and bloodlines available from the Land of the Rising Sun.
One of the first season stallions from Japan to join the Arrowfield roster later that year was champion racehorse Maurice (Screen Hero) who is starting to gain traction in the southern hemisphere market.
On Saturday, he sired brilliant Victoria Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) winner Hitotsu, who has emerged from his first Australian crop of 83 live foals, and that effort, on the back of some of his other first crop three-year-olds showing promise, will only help his commercial appeal.
Will Bourne, Ciaron Maher and David Eustace’s bloodstock manager, identified Hitotsu as a horse of considerable talent after his five and a quarter length tenth in the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at just his second start for his then trainer Wendy Kelly at Cranbourne.
His closing sixth in the VRC Sires’ (Gr 2, 1400m) convinced Bourne to take his inquiries further, which is part of the scope of his wide-ranging role for Maher and Eustace.
“I concentrate heavily on New Zealand and Australia and I obviously do a bit in Europe as well, but you can’t be across everything, so I try to focus on Australia and New Zealand and the agents send their options through from Europe, so you go through it and form an opinion,” Bourne told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“Locally, in the past two years we’ve had a good crack buying some tried horses like Bella Nipotina, Hitotsu and Biscayne Bay. Everyone overlooks the Australian market as everyone wants to buy a horse from Europe and land it here at $1.1 million, but no one looks to buy locally.
“Here, you can go and see the horse; there’s no quarantine and you don’t have to travel them (long distances), so I really like buying out of Australia and New Zealand.”
Prominent owners Ozzie Kheir and John O’Neill were among those to jump into Hitotsu when approached by Bourne, but he admitted to copping some flak about the price-tag prior to his first-up win at Donald and his fifth behind Anamoe (Street Boss) in the Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m).
“The owners did query if I paid too much for him but they backed me in and I’m very grateful for their support and backing my judgment,” Bourne said.
There were also questions posed about Hitotsu’s lack of recent racing to have him ready for the Derby, at just his sixth race start and third this campaign, having not raced since the Guineas three weeks earlier.
“Obviously we liked the horse and we thought he’d go well, but they were questioning him about having so few runs, but honestly, it was Ciaron and David’s plan the whole time,” Bourne said.
“He is a very naturally fit, clean-winded horse and they thought he wouldn’t need too many runs.
“Getting him to his right distance, third-up, they thought he would be able to do it and he was able to do it. It was a great training performance.”
Maher and Eustace also train Port Louis, a son of Maurice owned by Katsumi Yoshida of Shadai Stallion Station, and one of the biggest influences in the development of the nation’s elite thoroughbred.
Port Louis ran third behind Tiger Of Malay (Extreme Choice) and Converge (Frankel) in the BRC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m).
“We don’t have many other Maurices, though. We tried to buy a few at Easter this year, but the market was very strong on them,” Bourne said.
“Obviously trainers have got a few and they must go all right, as everyone seems to be bidding on them at the yearling sales. Although he hasn’t done overly much in Australia yet, they were particularly hard to buy this year.”
Bourne, who identified Hitotsu earlier this year after he’d had three starts for Kelly, says that “you can’t ignore the Japanese” breed.
“John (Messara) has really gotten ahead of the game there. They have got a great breeding program (in Japan). Ciaron raves about it all the time,” Bourne said.
“I think he spent a month over there looking at all the farms and training facilities – the operations they run over there are world class.”
Hitotsu was selected as a yearling by Kevin Kelly, husband of the colt’s original trainer Wendy, on behalf of owner Kevin Payne who retained a 40 per cent share of the three-year-old when a deal was struck between he and Bourne.
“I was looking for more of an athletic type miler. If he was a big, chunky, heavy set colt where you go, ‘wow, look at him, he’s going to go like a jet’ I wouldn’t have been interested in him,” Kevin Kelly recalled yesterday.
“I think Maurice is going to pertain a mile-plus, and I might be proven wrong in the future, but I think that’ll be the case. He was such an outstanding horse himself. I think Japanese horses have got a leg on us here.
“Arrowfield are great people to buy off; they’re very fair and I hold them in high regard as vendors.”
The Arrowfield-bred Profondo, a three-year-old colt by Shadai Stallion Station’s late stallion Deep Impact (Sunday Silence), won the Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) early last month and 2020 Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Tagaloa is by another high-class Japanese stallion in Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha).
Kelly, who was on course at Flemington on Saturday with Payne to watch Hitotsu’s Derby triumph, believes the Japanese-line stallions can play an important evolution in the Australasian thoroughbred in the next few years.
“I don’t think it could happen at a better time because eventually we’re going to be overrun with the same pattern of breeding right through,” he said.
“We are just breeding speed horses all the time, so you’re going to keep seeing overseas horses coming over and winning our mile-plus races. It’s going to keep happening.
“One of the reasons I bought a Maurice was because he was something different, but I did have a theory in mind (when I saw him).”
The Kellys’ early opinion of Hitotsu was backed up when he ran in three stakes races to begin his career and when the offer came from Bourne, Maher and Eustace, the Kellys recommended to Payne that he take the money, which is believed to have valued the horse at at least $800,000.
“When the offer came through for the horse, both Wendy and myself advised Kevin to think seriously about selling the horse,” Kelly said.
“The offer was too good to refuse, like most big offers, and we are sellers. A very good trainer once told me, ‘One hundred dollar bills don’t break legs’.”
Kelly and Payne have reinvested in Japanese-line stock in the past six months, purchasing weanlings by Coolmore shuttler Saxon Warrior (Deep Impact), a three-time Group 1-winning miler at two and three, from the Magic Millions National Sale.
“I went down and had a look at them at Lauriston (Thoroughbred Farm) the other day and they are growing out really nicely,” Kelly said of the Saxon Warrior weanlings.
“I also bought a very cheap yearling at the Melbourne Gold sale by Mikki Isle, so I have to say I am into these Japanese horses.”
Global Impact: The Rise Of The Japanese Thoroughbred