Yahagi and Lane to clash in Japanese Derby for the ages
Trainer Yoshito Yahagi and jockey Damian Lane combined to give Japan a first Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) win last year with Lys Gracieux (Heart’s Cry), but on Sunday, they will be in opposing corners as they tackle the world’s richest and most heavily-bet Classic, the Tokyo Yushun (Gr 1, 2400m).
The Derby (Gr 1, 1m 4f) at Epsom may be the original, the Kentucky Derby (Gr 1, 10f) may be the best known, but it is the Tokyo Yushun – the Japanese Derby – that offers the greatest prize to owners, the highest liquidity for bettors and, increasingly, the most interest from a breeding perspective.
Last year, almost US$235 million was wagered on the Tokyo Yushun, almost one and a half times the US$166 million handle on the Kentucky Derby. As for prize-money, the US$4 million of the Japanese Derby outweighs the US$3 million Kentucky Derby purse and the US$2 million Epsom prize.
Financial statistics aside, the Tokyo Yushun remains a crucial, breed-shaping race – the most important of them all in Japan – at a time when, globally, Classic horses are proving less attractive as a stallion prospect. The Kentucky Derby, as a ten-furlong contest, is less affected than the standard mile-and-a-half Classic but, these days, it is a rarity that an Epsom Derby-winning three-year-old stands out as an exciting potential sire.
In Japan, the Tokyo Yushun remains the race that every owner wants to win above all others – more than the Arima Kinen (Gr 1, 2500m) or the Japan Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) – and, generally, a lucrative career at stud awaits the winner and those in nearest pursuit.
“For all Japanese horsemen, the Japanese Derby is a very special race to win,” jockey Yuichi Fukunaga, who won the Tokyo Yushun on Wagnerian (Deep Impact) in 2018, told ANZ Bloodstock News through an interpreter yesterday. “It is difficult since the horses are so young but is easily the highest status race to win each year.”
Five of the top seven Japanese stallions in 2019 by earnings ran in the Tokyo Yushun; among them were two winners, Deep Impact (Sunday Silence) and King Kamehameha (Kingmambo), a runner-up in Heart’s Cry (Sunday Silence) and two who finished just behind the placegetters, Rulership (King Kamehameha) and Daiwa Major (Sunday Silence).
Of the two others who did not run in the Tokyo Yushun, Stay Gold (Sunday Silence) was a late maturer who would add Group 1 wins at a mile and a half in the Hong Kong Vase (Gr 1, 2400m) and the Dubai Sheema Classic (Gr 1, 2400m), while Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha), despite being by a Derby winner, was campaigned as a sprinter-miler at home and abroad.
With Japanese influence ever-increasing throughout the racing and bloodstock worlds, all eyes on Sunday afternoon will be on the Fuchu racecourse, 25 kilometres west of downtown Tokyo, in search of the next Deep Impact or King Kamehameha.
Yahagi sends out the impressive Contrail (Deep Impact), who took the Hopeful Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) as a late two-year-old before returning a dominant winner in the first leg of the Japanese Triple Crown, the Satsuki Sho (Gr 1, 2000m) – the Japanese 2,000 Guineas – at Nakayama last month. Fukunaga will take the ride on the unbeaten colt from gate five.
Lane will be legged aboard Contrail’s main rival, Satsuki Sho runner-up Salios (Heart’s Cry). A juvenile Group 1 winner himself, having won the Asahi Hai Futurity (Gr 1, 1600m) in tremendous style last December, he is out of German mare Salomina (Lomitas), who won the Preis der Diana (Gr 1, 2200m), the German Oaks, for Australian Bloodstock before being sold to Katsumi Yoshida. He will jump from barrier 12 in the 18-horse field.
It is Contrail, though, who shapes as a potential heir apparent for the late Deep Impact. Almost a year on from his death, it appears that the Japanese legend – a winner of seven Group 1 races in 2005 and 2006 and a sire of 46 Group 1 winners – may have unearthed his magnus opum, his pièce de résistance, the horse capable of matching his sire’s feats on the racetrack and who will be given the chance to emulate his success in the breeding barn.
“I think he has the potential to be one of the greats,” Fukunaga said. “He just keeps getting better and better so I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of his career. The sky seems to be the limit with this colt.”
Fukunaga has ridden many a top-liner: Cesario (Special Week) and her son Epiphaneia (Symboli Kris S), Just A Way (Heart’s Cry), Eishin Preston (Green Dancer), Real Steel (Deep Impact) and Vivlos (Deep Impact), among others.
While Fukunaga’s sole Derby win came on Wagnerian, the 43-year-old has been legged up on classy horses like Real Steel and Epiphaneia in the blue riband and has rarely finished far from the winner. He believes that the unbeaten Contrail is primed to add the Tokyo Yushun to his already burgeoning record, taking him to five wins from five starts.
“From his form, his temperament and everything, he is the right kind of horse to have going into the Derby,” he said. “Other than his dam (Rhodochrosite), who raced at shorter distances, he has a pedigree that should get him there as well.
“His form has continually gotten better as he has progressed in his career. He has improved greatly even since the Satsuki Sho. I rode him last week and he was in very good condition with no problems at all.”
For Yahagi, the addition of speed from Rhodochrosite (Unbridled’s Song), a maiden from seven starts between 1200 metres and 1400 metres, is a positive for Contrail as he stretches out to 2400 metres for the first time.
“Deep Impact’s reliability in this race makes Contrail a great contender,” Yahagi told ANZ Bloodstock News, referencing the fact that three of the last four Tokyo Yushun winners were sired by Deep Impact, as well as 11 of the 24 placegetters since 2012. “However, his dam also gives him some added speed which I think will help him get across the line. He has evolved a lot mentally during the past year but, no, he really has no faults.
He added: “Physically, he hasn’t really changed that much during his career but his form and balance have gradually improved as he has gained experience. He is also much better mentally than he was early on. He was a very tense horse at first but he has matured a lot.”
Yahagi reminisced yesterday about the first time that he laid eyes on the Deep Impact foal that would become Contrail, ten days after the colt’s birth in April, 2017, while also sounding a warning to his rivals for the future.
“When I saw him as a foal, he was exactly what you’d want to see in a Deep Impact foal,” Yahagi said. “While I felt confident then that he would turn out to be a good horse, I couldn’t have imagined he’d turn out to be as amazing as he has. He just keeps getting better as well. I think as good as he was last year, and how much he has improved already this year, that he will continue to improve and he will be an even more impressive four-year-old and onward.”
Yahagi, familiar for his expansive collection of hats and his tailored finery as much as his talent for preparing racehorses, has never been one to shy away from a challenge. In the last 12 months, his appetite for adventure has been rewarded with Lys Gracieux taking Japan’s two all-star races – the Takarazuka Kinen (Gr 1, 2200m) and the Arima Kinen – as well as Australia’s weight-for-age championship, all in the space of six months.
The 59-year-old also prepared Loves Only You (Deep Impact), a potential Cox Plate aspirant this year, to take the Yushun Himba (Gr 1, 2400m), the Japanese Oaks, a year ago last weekend, while his turf Grade 1 winner Mozu Ascot (Frankel) switched to the dirt and won the February Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) before an intended Doncaster Mile (Gr 1, 1600m) campaign was thwarted due to Covid-19.
“Early on in my stable’s history, we had a lot of runner-up efforts,” Yahagi said. “But now we win a lot more and it truly is a group effort. Every member of my team works tirelessly to be the best and it has shown in our results. I am very thankful to and for them, I couldn’t do it without them.”
Naturally, for any Japanese Classic prospect, there is an air of anticipation about whether this may be the horse to finally overcome the nation’s hoodoo in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Gr 1, 2400m). Even as a noted and proven traveller of horses, Yahagi is not getting ahead of himself yet, saying that he wants to get beyond the Derby first. He also says that, even if Contrail wins, the lure of joining his sire as a Triple Crown winner with victory in the Kikuka Sho (Gr 1, 3000m) is tempting.
However, he does acknowledge that owner Shinji Maeda is determined to win the Arc; his colours were sported aboard Kizuna (Deep Impact), who won the Prix Niel (Gr 2, 2400m) before finishing fourth to Treve (Motivator) in the Arc in 2013.
“The owner has wanted to win the Arc for a while, so I think there is a chance of us going to France,” Yahagi said.
It could be a busy October for Yahagi, who also hopes to return to Melbourne after his successful sojourn last year with Lys Gracieux.
“I will come back to Australia – if not this year, then again soon,” he said.
The Tokyo Yushun will jump at 4:40pm AEST time on Sunday.