Lucas staying the journey with his Japanese homebred Panthalassa
Australian owner has confidence that high-balling Group 1 winner can make difference to Stud Book
Australian Eric Lucas, a thoroughbred enthusiast who spent three decades working in Japan and bred and co-owned high-balling international Group 1 winner Panthalassa (Lord Kanaloa), has so much belief in the first-season sire that he has retained his share in the Yulong-owned stallion.
The now semi-retired Lucas, who has broodmares in Australia, Japan and Europe, will support Panthalassa in his first southern hemisphere season at stud where he will stand at Yulong’s Victorian stallion operation near Nagambie.
Yoshio Yahagi-trained entire was victorious from ages to six in his five-season, 27-start racing career and his triumphs were headed by wins in the Dubai Turf (Gr 1, 1800m) and Saudi Cup (Gr 1, 1800m).
Panthalassa, along with fellow Japan-based shuttlers Admire Mars (Daiwa Major) and Maurice (Screen Hero), who will both stand at Arrowfield Stud, Woodside Park Stud-bound Benbatl (Dubawi) and Rich Hill Stud shuttler Satono Aladdin (Deep Impact) touched down in Melbourne late on Tuesday to complete quarantine. They will be released from quarantine on August 3.
Lucas has vowed to use this full complement of nominations in Pantalassa in his first and ongoing years at stud and is already dreaming of breeding a top-class Guineas and Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) horse by his globe-trotting sire.
“He did a lot of racing at two, he won every year that he raced and he was really in the peak form of his career in the last year that he was at the track, so the fact that he had some precocity, combined with his ability to stay, [makes him an appealing stud prospect],” Lucas told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“He really loved racing and he had amazing powers of recovery, which is why he could travel so frequently and perform very well [internationally].
“There’s a lot of boxes that he ticks, plus the fact that he’s completely Danzig free, so he’s a complete outcross for Danehill and Invincible Spirit line mares and he’s completely Sunday Silence free, too, so that makes him very easy to mate in Japan at a time when those sorts of stallions are not easy to find.
“We just hope that, as with some other horses that were renowned free-running stallions, that he gets the results.”
In tactics similar to those employed by Australia’s multiple Group 1-winning mare Pride Of Jenni (Pride Of Dubai), none more so captivating than her all-the-way Queen Elizabeth Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) success at Randwick in April, Panthalassa also gave Japanese superstar Equinox (Kitasan Black) in the 2022 Tenno Sho (Autumn) (Gr 1, 2000m) by setting a trademark brutal tempo to be only just be denied by the country’s champion horse.
“He’s got deep stamina but the thing that I think is really interesting about him in Australia is, he had tremendous speed and the sectionals that he ran are just in a different league to most of the staying horses that have come to Australia and stood at stud down here,” Lucas said.
“Panthalassa has also got an interesting pedigree. Lord Kanaloa’s a champion sprinter who got up to a mile, but he was really a six-furlong horse, and he’s out of a Montjeu mare but his next two sires on his dam line are High Estate, who was the champion two-year-old in Europe in 1988, and then Thatching, who was the champion sprinter in Europe, so he’s got a lot of speed [in his pedigree] as well.
“No one knows with stallions, but there’s every chance that that speed is going to stand him in good stead in Australia.”
Panthalassa is the best of five winners out of the Lucas-owned broodmare Miss Pemberley (Montjeu) who also produced the Japan Graded-placed duo Dimension (Deep Impact) and Etenddard (Deep Impact).
Lucas raced Panthalassa in partnership with the Hiroo Racing Club, a Japan syndicate that he has supported for the best part of a decade.
The Australian owner and breeder is mindful of the commercial realities of racing horses, but it’s the dream of breeding and racing a Classic winner that appeals to him.
“I like to breed not necessarily or even mainly with a view of sales ring success, although I do sell horses commercially, and you have to, but I am always interested in trying to produce an individual, especially one that can get over a little bit of ground,” Lucas said.
“I am an old-school racing person. I am less interested in six-furlong racing than I am in getting horses that can win over three-year-old classic distances from a mile to a mile-and-a-half and that’s why the Panthalassa story is so exciting for me.”
He added: “I think he’ll go very well with Australian mares physically because … I wouldn’t say he’s light, but he’s not a big horse.
“He’s very athletic and very strong and I think he’ll put some quality into some of the larger, well-muscled Australian mares that maybe could do with a little bit more quality and length of rein.”
Panthalassa, one of three Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha) sires on the Yulong roster in 2024, will stand for an introductory fee of $16,500 (inc GST).