Tag: Heart’s Cry

Posthumous First Japanese Sires’ Championship for Duramente

There's a new king of the Japanese sire ranks and his name is Duramente (Jpn). However, his coronation is bittersweet for the Shadai Stallion Station as the son of King Kamehameha (Jpn) died in September 2021 at the age of just nine.

The winner in 2015 of the G1 Satsuki Sho and G1 Tokyo Yushun – the Japanese 2,000 Guineas and Derby equivalents – Duramente was quick to make an impression following his retirement to stud in 2017. The champion first-season sire of 2020, he has progressed through the senior ranks at an eye-catching rate, finishing 11th in the general sires' table in the year of his untimely death, and then fifth in 2022. 

Duramente's outstanding daughter Liberty Island (Jpn) played a major role in her sire's  first championship. Out of the top-class Australian mare Yankee Rose (Aus) (All American {Aus}), whose exploits on the track included Group 1 wins in the Inglis Sires' and Spring Champion S. as well as finishing runner-up to Capitalist (Aus) in the G1 Golden Slipper, Liberty Island followed up her Grade 1 success as a juvenile by landing the Fillies' Triple Crown of 2023. She then found only the mighty Equinox (Jpn) too good for her in the G1 Japan Cup.

Duramente's leading first-crop son Titleholder (Jpn) was still running for him in 2023 at the age of five, and to his three Grade 1 wins of 2021 and 2022, which included the Kikuka Sho (St Leger), he added the G2 Nikkei Sho, as well as finishing third on Christmas Eve in the G1 Arima Kinen.

With a Classic winner from each of his crops to date, Duramente was also represented in 2023 by Stars On Earth (Jpn), his Oka Sho and Yushun Himba (1,000 Guineas and Oaks) winner of the previous year who was third in the Japan Cup and second in the Arima Kinen behind Do Deuce (Jpn).

Dura Erde (Jpn), the G1 Hopeful S winner of 2022, managed two Grade 1 placings in December, while Champagne Color (Jpn) won the G1 NHK Mile last May. The latter is a rarity in that his dam Memorial Life (GB) is by the subfertile and later gelded Reckless Abandon (GB).

Duramente, who was a son of the dual Grade 1 winner Admire Groove (Jpn), herself a half-sister to the Shadai stallion Rulership (Jpn), owned a pedigree replete with the dominant names of the Japanese breeding scene over the last decades, with his first three dams being daughters of Sunday Silence, Tony Bin (Ire) and Northern Taste respectively. It is easy to see why he succeeded in the short time granted to him at stud, and even easier to see that he will be missed. 

King Kamehameha, who was also champion broodmare sire for 2023, was responsible for the quinella in the table, with another of his sons, Lord Kanaloa (Jpn) finishing a close second – a spot he has occupied for the last four years, the previous three being behind the 11-time champion Deep Impact (Jpn). 

Among the top six sires in Japan for 2023, three were Japanese Derby winners, one a runner-up in that same Classic, and one a Japanese St Leger and Japan Cup winner. Lord Kanaloa is something of an outlier among this elite crew as five of his six Grade 1 wins came over 1,200m, with the other being the Yasuda Kinen over 1,600m. He is best known as a stallion, however, for siring the Fillies' Triple Crown and dual Japan Cup winner Almond Eye (Jpn). In 2023 he was represented by the G1 Saudi Cup winner Panthalassa (Jpn), who has himself just joined the stallion ranks at Arrow Stud, and by his fellow Grade 1 winners First Force (Jpn) and Brede Weg (Jpn).

Kizuna (Jpn), a son of Deep Impact and the leading first-season sire of 2019, has managed a top-five finish in each of the last three seasons and was third overall for 2023. His globe-trotting daughter Songline (Jpn) led the way, completing back-to-back wins in the G1 Yasuda Kinen in June after winning the G1 Victoria Mile. She also won the G3 1351 Turf Sprint at the Saudi Cup meeting of 2022, and that same race was won by another of Kizuna's offspring, Bathrat Leon (Jpn), in 2023.

Heart's Cry (Jpn), whose racing claim to fame was being the only horse to beat Deep Impact on Japanese soil when winning the G1 Arima Kinen of 2005, died in March 2023, three years after being pensioned at Shadai. He added a new Group 1 winner to his list last season, but not in Japan. His major flag-bearer was Continuous (Jpn), trained in Ireland by Aidan O'Brien and winner of the St Leger in England. Heart's Cry's previous year's Classic winner, the Japanese Derby hero Do Deuce (Jpn), holds similar dragon-slaying credentials of his own, having beaten Equinox in that race, and he was back for more in 2023, which ended with another top-level win for him in the Arima Kinen.

Heart's Cry ended up in fourth place in the table, having finished in the top three in the six years prior to that. Four years after his death, Deep Impact finally relinquished the title, and was fifth in 2023, a year in which he too was represented in overseas Classics by the Derby and Irish Derby winner Auguste Rodin (Jpn), who is a member of his final crop of just 14 foals.

Justin Palace (Jpn), from Deep Impact's penultimate crop, was his leading scorer in Japan and won the G1 Tenno Sho in the spring. That success has doubtless contributed to the move of his 14-year-old half-brother, the GI Belmont winner Palace Malice (Curlin), to Darley Japan after he spent eight seasons at Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky. Incidentally, along with the brand new recruits Adayar (Ire) and Hukum (Ire) from Europe, Darley Japan has also taken in another former American-based stallion for 2024 in Heart's Cry's son Yoshida (Jpn), a name which is certainly not unfamiliar in Japanese breeding circles and beyond.

Sixth in the general sires' list for 2023 was Kitasan Black (Jpn), whose fame reached new heights courtesy of his son Equinox (Jpn), the highest-rated horse in the world last year. Kitasan Black, who is by Deep Impact's full-brother Black Tide (Jpn), is the kind of horse who simply wouldn't get a look in at a Flat stud in Europe these days, but that's a pity. His seven Grade 1 wins came between 2,000m and 3,200m and just about everything in between. His back-to-back wins in the two-mile Tenno Sho (Spring) were not off-putting to Japanese breeders, however, and he was the busiest stallion in the country in 2023, covering 242 mares. His load may well be eased somewhat during this coming season, with his son Equinox now having retired to stand alongside him at Shadai. Father and son are the two most expensive stallions in Japan at ¥20 million (€124,000) and the 'book full' sign went up for Equinox as soon as his fee, which is a record for a first-season sire, was announced. 

Up and Coming

Suave Richard (Jpn), who was runner-up to Rey De Oro (Jpn) in the 2017 Japanese Derby before winning the G1 Osaka Hai at four and the Japan Cup (under Oisin Murphy) as a five-year-old, was the champion first-season sire in Japan for 2023.

The stand-out among his 21 winners is Regaleira (Jpn), who beat Sottsass's brother Shin Emperor (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}) to win the G1 Hopeful S. on December 28. She owns a special pedigree, her dam Roca (Jpn) (Harbinger {GB}) being out of a three-parts-sister to Deep Impact. Regaleira's recent victory was also the first at Grade 1 level for Harbinger as a broodmare sire. The King George winner of 2010 finished 11th in the general sires' table. 

While Suave Richard, by Heart's Cry, was also responsible for G2 winner Corazon Beat (Jpn) and was the easy winner on progeny earnings, he was not the most prolific when it came to number of winners. That honour went to Moanin, the Grade 1-winning dirt miler by Henny Hughes who was represented by 44 winners, a staggering number by Japanese two-year-old standards, and all recorded on dirt. In fact, the second, third and fourth in the table were all American-bred stallions. Giant's Causeway's son Bricks And Mortar finished runner-up with 14 winners, including the G3 Saudi Arabia Royal Cup scorer Gonbade Qabus (Jpn), and New Year's Day, whose career started in Kentucky but whose first Japanese-bred runners came last season, was represented by 23 winners. 

The aforementioned Japanese Derby winner Rey De Oro was fifth with 13 winners, the same number recorded by the dual Dubai World Cup winner Thunder Snow (Ire), who was seventh, just behind Kentucky Derby and Preakness hero California Chrome, who is another to have been moved from America to Japan.

 

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A Continuous Quest for New Frontiers

The Corinthian quest is finding life tough. These days romance is run off its legs by finance. Victory for Continuous in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, though, 15 days after his St Leger win, would make history of the most reassuring kind.

Each week frontiers in sport are crossed: stats shredded, records set, barriers smashed. With every new 'first' the surviving 'nevers' gain mystique. Racing still has a few. No horse has won the St Leger and the Arc in the same season. It was hard enough already with a three-week gap. This year Continuous could be squeezing it into a fortnight.

Enhancing the intrigue is the knowledge that Continuous's owners are not sentimental strategists. Stirring the public's imagination isn't the first job of an Aidan O'Brien horse in Coolmore colours. If it happens, all well and good. The priorities though are winning, prize-money and stud values.

Yet every now and then we see an illustrious O'Brien Thoroughbred chase something grander than commercial worth. Continuous is on that path. Before him, O'Brien's Camelot was appointed to become the first Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky in 1970. A three-quarter length defeat to the 25-1 shot Encke in the Leger was the resting place for that noble dream.

Avoidance is a modern reflex. In heavyweight boxing risk-aversion has addled the sport's marquee division. Real Madrid can't decline a Clasico fixture with Barcelona. But in racing horses can be confined to comfort zones. Derby winners may be chauffeured off to covering sheds to avert the possibility of defeat.  In National Hunt racing last week the announcement that Constitution Hill would stick to hurdling this season was not well-received by armchair proponents of boldness. Their horse, their choice, is the riposte.

Victory in Paris would add lustre too to the St Leger in an age when the case for stamina as a glamorous attribute feels harder and harder to win

Yet 'the lads,' as O'Brien calls the Coolmore team, are sometimes true to Saul Bellow's line: “A man's life is not a business.”  Their reaction to Camelot's defeat at Doncaster was not to give up on the Triple Crown. Only six months ago it was the target set for Auguste Rodin, who crashed out at stage one, in the 2,000 Guineas, but progressed nevertheless to stardom. 

O'Brien's last four St Leger winners all tried their luck straight away at Longchamp. Kew Gardens (seventh), Capri (17th), Leading Light (12th) and Scorpion (10th) proceeded to Paris. None made it seem a good idea; but Continuous, you sense, would travel to France with more authority and a bigger chance.

“He's a hardy horse and he could back up,” O'Brien said after the seventh St Leger win of his training career. Continuous has speed to go with his stamina and the mark of an autumn horse. He began 2023 underwhelmingly with three defeats but now acts like the boss. Within days of his Doncaster win he had shortened from 12-1 to 8-1 for the Arc.

So, let's line up the historians by Longchamp's winning post? Maybe, but at their own risk of having an idle day. Ballymoss won the 1957 Leger and the 1958 Arc but had a year in between to think about it. The demands of a 1m 6f Classic for three-year-olds are distinct from an all-age European championship over a mile and a half. It's not an obvious progression, especially with the proliferation of big autumn targets, which were less numerous in Nijinsky's time.

By any measure the Arc is a gruelling race to win. And at the end of a hard campaign we enter the realm of the unknowable, unseeable vulnerabilities veiled by form. Eight horses have won the Arc twice but none has scored a treble. When Enable tried, many reasons could be found for thinking her brilliance would carry her. When she failed, it seemed strangely obvious that it was a mission too far. There is a reason why frontiers stay uncrossed. It's because they're beyond equine endurance, even with the best pedigrees, trainers and jockeys to call on, though Nijinsky's pomp was finally ended in 1970 not by fatigue so much as a narrow tactical defeat in the Arc.

O'Brien has harvested English and Irish Classics but could be said to have something of an itch, by his standards, at Longchamp. Most trainers would retire content with two Arc wins (Dylan Thomas in 2007 and Found in 2016). You might have a small bet however on O'Brien being desperate to bring his Arc record closer to his extraordinary tally of English and Irish Classic wins.

A €120,000 supplementary fee four days before the Arc would buy him another ticket to ride, with a Japanese-bred horse by Heart's Cry. And victory in Paris would add lustre too to the St Leger in an age when the case for stamina as a glamorous attribute feels harder and harder to win.

It is the way of modern sport that people talk less these days of “making history,” except as a sardine tossed to the media, or with one eye on the financial rewards. But when racehorses make history, we sure as hell honour it. We remember the trailblazers more keenly – and with gratitude. They answer the heart's cry.

 

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Seven Days: A St Leger Fit For a King

With a royal audience, Continuous (Jpn) became the seventh winner of the St Leger for Aidan O'Brien, relegating the King and Queen's runner Desert Hero (GB) to third, just as Pour Moi (Ire) had done in the Derby with Carlton House back in 2011 in front of the late Queen.

There were plenty of strands to an enthralling St Leger that would have made for good storylines: two of those, victory for Desert Hero with his owners present on Town Moor, or a final British Classic for Frankie Dettori, may well have propelled the dear old Classic to the front pages on Sunday. As it was, and for less obviously mainstream reasons, the win of Continuous was extremely satisfying. 

His success completed a full set of British Classics for Sunday Silence as paternal grandsire, with three of his sons having provided this quintet. The most significant contributor was of course Deep Impact (Jpn), Sunday Silence's most influential offspring, but Saturday provided the chance for Heart's Cry to have a posthumous moment in the limelight, some six months after his death at the age of 22, which came two years after he was pensioned at Shadai Stallion Station in Japan.

Heart's Cry, out of the dual Grade 3 winner Irish Dance (Jpn), herself a daughter of the Arc winner Tony Bin (Ire), has lived in the shadow of his more famous stud-mate Deep Impact. This is despite Heart's Cry having been the only horse to have beaten him on Japanese soil, in the G1 Arima Kinen in the year of Deep Impact's Triple Crown success. Heart's Cry was a year older, and after winning the G2 Shimbun Hai went on to run second in the Japanese Derby to another legend of the Shadai stallion ranks, King Kamehameha (Jpn). Campaigned at three, four and five, he will doubtless be best remembered as a racehorse for his defeat of Deep Impact, but he was beaten only a nose by the English-trained raider Alkaased in the Japan Cup a month before that, and after his Christmas Day triumph went on to Nad Al Sheba, where he was the easy winner of the Dubai Sheema Classic, with Ouija Board (GB) and Alexander Goldrun (Ire) among those to have finished behind him that day.

In 2007, both he and Deep Impact retired to Shadai's imposing stallion roster, and three years later they were first and second on the first-season sires' table. By 2012, Deep Impact was champion sire, a position he is only likely to relinquish this year, four seasons after his death. Heart's Cry worked his way up the table and has never been out of the top five stallions in Japan in the last decade, with his highest placing coming in 2019 when he was once again runner-up to his old rival.

In the 2,000 Guineas winner Saxon Warrior (Jpn), Oaks victrix Snowfall (Jpn) and this season's Derby, Irish Derby and Irish Champion S. winner Auguste Rodin (Jpn), we have seen Deep Impact blend well with mares by Galileo (Ire). It is fair to assume that that is where Fluff (Ire), the full-sister to Saxon Warrior's dam Maybe (Ire), was heading in 2019 in the season in which Deep Impact became incapacitated before his death in the August of that year. Heart's Cry stepped in and on Saturday, as Continuous unleashed a lethal injection of pace to cruise to make the front-running Gregory (GB) look as if he was standing still, it was easy to spot the thick silver lining to what may have once felt like a black cloud. 

Natagora (Fr), the 1,000 Guineas winner of 2008 after her previous season's victory in the G1 Cheveley Park S., is the only outlier to the group. Conceived during the three seasons in which her sire Divine Light (Jpn) stood in France, she is out of the Lagardere-bred Reinamixa (Fr) (Linamix {Fr}).

Deep Impact has also been represented by three French Classic winners in Study Of Man (Ire) and Beauty Parlour (GB), both out of Storm Cat-line mares, and Fancy Blue (Ire), whose dam is a full-sister to High Chaparral (Ire) (Sadler's Wells).

Heart's Cry can't match him in the depth of his haul of Group 1 winners but he has been no slouch himself. In Australia, he has sired the Cox Plate winner Lys Gracieux (Jpn) and the Caulfield Cup winner Admire Rakti (Jpn). The latter was another to have been out of a mare by an Arc winner, this one being Helissio (Fr), who also started his stud career at Shadai.

A nice postscript in the year of Heart's Cry's demise is that his son Suave Richard (Jpn), one of his two winners of the Japan Cup, is currently leading the freshman sires' table in Japan. 

What will arguably be most important to Japan on the reputational front, however, is if Heart's Cry appears as the sire of an Arc winner himself. It's a tall order to turn out a relatively lightly-raced colt again just 15 days after his St Leger triumph but it is hard not to feel that Continuous, who will need to be supplemented, has much in his favour to make an impact at Longchamp on the first Sunday of October. 

The only thing that would make the Japanese fans happier on Arc day than a win for Continuous would be if the spoils went instead to Through Seven Seas (Jpn). The five-year-old mare is by Dream Journey (Jpn), a grandson of Sunday Silence, and she was last seen running the mighty Equinox (Jpn) to a neck in the G1 Takarazuka Kinen in June. Trained by Tomohito Ozeki, Through Seven Seas arrived in Chantilly on Friday and is boarding at Nicolas Clement's stable in the build-up to the Arc.

A Valued Test

While there is plenty of head-shaking at the shuffling off to National Hunt studs of St Leger winners in this part of the world (NB: this doesn't prevent Flat breeders from using their services), the picture is entirely different in Japan.

As Triple Crown winners, Deep Impact and his immensely popular young stallion son Contrail (Jpn) of course both won Japan's St Leger equivalent, the Kikuka Sho. So did Kitasan Black (Jpn), the sire of Equinox and the busiest stallion in Japan this year with 242 mares covered. So too did Orfevre (Jpn), who was beaten a neck into second in the following year's Arc, and also Epipheneaia (Jpn), who went on to win the Japan Cup and sired the Fillies' Triple Crown winner Daring Tact (Jpn) in his first crop. They too remain popular members of the Shadai roster. 

Another For the Late Adlerflug

Doncaster's was not the only St Leger to be run over the weekend, as the German equivalent was also staged at Dortmund on Sunday, though this, like the Irish St Leger, has in recent years been opened up to older horses. 

This year's winner, the Gestut Hof Ittlingen homebred Lordano (Ger), is a four-year-old, and the son of Adlerflug (Ger) went one better than his full-brother Loft (Ger), who was second in the same race two years ago.

The most famous member of this family that has served Ittlingen so well, in international terms at least, is Lando (Ger) (Acetanango {Ger}), a full-brother to their grand-dam, Laurella (GB). At home, Lando took the scalp of Monsun (Ger) in the Deutsches Derby and in the following season's Grosser Preis von Baden. Twice named German Horse of the Year, he spread his wings to win two Group 1 races in Italy and, finally, the Japan Cup of 1995. He makes an appearance in modern-day pedigrees most usually as the damsire of the talented but subfertile Farhh (GB), who already has four young sons at stud: Far Above (Ire), King Of Change (GB), Wells Farhh Go (Ire) and Dee Ex Bee (GB).

Despite twice beating Monsun (Ger), Lando could not be held in the same regard as him as an influence at stud. In reflecting on Monsun's reign it is worth remembering that his sire Konigsstuhl (Ger) won the German Triple Crown, while his damsire, the Deutsches Derby winner Surumu (Ger), also features as the paternal grandsire of Lando.

Class will out, if only we give it a chance.

Hotter Still

As the two-year-old racing steps up a notch in Europe, it is hard not to be impressed with the start Too Darn Hot (GB) has made to his stud career. 

After the previous weekend's victory for his daughter Fallen Angel (GB), whose owner-breeder Steve Parkin outlined plans for his own stallion operation in Monday's TDN, Too Darn Hot was represented by another eye-catching success in the facile winner of the G2 May Hill S., Darnation (Ire), for owner-bredeer Newtown Anner Stud.

Karl Burke is the trainer behind both of these fillies and he's pretty darn hot himself at the moment with a 30% strike-rate. Burke also provided Ballyhane Stud's Soldier's Call (GB) with his first group winner over the weekend in the G3 Prix Eclipse scorer Dawn Charger (Ire), as well as winning the Listed Stand Cup S. at Chester with Al Qareem (Ire) (Awtaad {Ire}). At Ireland's Champions Festival, Burke had also saddled G2 Dullingham Park S. winner Flight Plan (GB) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}).

Another highly impressive juvenile performance at Doncaster came from Iberian (Ire), winner of the G2 Champagne S. for Charlie Hills. The son of Lope De Vega (Ire) was bred by Ballylinch Stud, who retained a share in him when he was bought by Johnny McKeever on his trainer's behalf, and Ballylinch now races him in partnership with Teme Valley Racing. With luck we will see this progressive colt next in the Dewhurst.

Lope De Vega, whose first-crop son Belardo (Ire) won the Dewhurst in 2014 and was also bred by Ballylinch, has sired more winners (138) in Europe than any other stallion so far this year, and that haul includes 14 black-type winners. 

Iberian's success capped a good 36 hours for bloodstock agent Johnny McKeever, who saw two of his in-training selections for the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott stable land group wins in Australia. Just Fine (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) won Saturday's G3 Kingston Town S. at Randwick after being bought from from last year's Horses-in-Training Sale, while Goffs London Sale purchase Military Mission (Ire) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) landed the G3 Newcastle Gold Cup.

 

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Eleventh Japanese Title for Deep Impact

To a degree, when it comes to the Japanese sires' championship of 2022, one could resort to that old saying 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. It holds good for now, as in the last three years the names filling the top three spots in the list have remained the same, in an unchanged order: Deep Impact (Jpn), Lord Kanaloa (Jpn), and Heart's Cry (Jpn).

But all things change eventually and, as we know, two of those stallions are no longer active, with Deep Impact gaining his last three championships posthumously. With his legend now fully appreciated worldwide, he was quick to make his mark in his home country after his retirement to the Shadai Stallion Station in 2007. The son of the hugely dominant Sunday Silence was Japan's champion first-season sire of 2010. He made his debut in the top 10 of the country's general sires' list the following year by finishing in fourth position when King Kamehameha (Jpn) was champion, but Deep Impact then wrested that title from his stud-mate in 2012 and has held it on an annual basis ever since.

The members of his final small crop of 14, conceived after covering 24 mares before his premature demise at the age of 17  in August 2019, are 3-year-olds this year. In Japan, where it is still considered desirable for the elite gallopers to race on as older horses, Deep Impact could maintain his supremacy for another year, but sooner or later his reign will come to an end. His stars of 2022 in Japan were the G1 Osaka Hai winner Potager (Jpn) and Ask Victor More (Jpn), who won the G1 Kikuka Sho (Japanese St Leger). He also featured as the broodmare sire of G1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup victrix Geraldina (Jpn), a daughter of Maurice (Jpn) and perhaps Deep Impact's crowning glory, Gentildonna (Jpn), the Fillies' Triple Crown, Japan Cup and Arima Kinen winner who was Japan's Horse of the Year in 2012 and 2014.

Farther afield, he was represented by G1 Australasian Oaks winner Glint Of Hope (Jpn), while the G1 Vertem Futurity Trophy winner Auguste Rodin (Ire) gives Deep Impact a great chance of further European Classic success this year.

The top-class sprinter/miler Lord Kanaloa, a son of the late King Kamehameha, looks a champion sire in the making with a growing international reputation. He was the approximate equivalent of only £163,000 shy of Deep Impact in progeny earnings from 276 winners last year, the best of them being G1 NHK Mile Cup winner Danon Scorpion (Jpn) and G1 Dubai Turf dead-heater Panthalassa (Jpn). Not too many of his offspring have made it to Europe yet, but a notable winner in Ireland last season was 'TDN Rising Star' Beginnings, a daughter of dual Guineas heroine Winter (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) who now has Classic aspirations of her own.

Heart's Cry was absent from the covering shed in 2022, having been pensioned at Shadai the previous June at the age of 20. A contemporary of Deep Impact, he finished runner-up to him in the freshman championship of 2010 and, despite always being in his shadow, has enjoyed a sterling career of his own.

Heart's Cry sired the 2022 Japanese Derby winner Do Deuce (Jpn) and his previous best performers around the world include Japan Cup winner Suave Richard (Jpn), Cox Plate winner Lys Gracieux (Jpn) and dual Grade 1 winner Yoshida (Jpn), who is now at WinStar Farm in Kentucky. In France this year, he was represented by the Aidan O'Brien-trained G3 Prix Thomas Bryon winner Continuous (Jpn), who is out of a full-sister to Maybe (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) and thus bred on similar lines to Saxon Warrior (Jpn).

For the second year running Deep Impact's son Kizuna (Jpn), the second of his sire's Derby winners in 2013, was fourth in the general sires' table having been the leading first-season sire of 2019.

His highlight of the year came when Songline (Jpn) won the G1 Yasuda Kinen, having started 2022 with victory in the G3 1351 Turf Sprint at a Saudi Cup meeting which was dominated by Japanese runners. Kizuna's son Bathrat Leon (Jpn) won the G2 Godolphin Mile at Meydan the following month.

Duramente (Jpn), who sadly died after a bout of colitis in August 2021 at the age of just nine, looks an increasingly big loss to the Japanese ranks, having finished fifth in the table for 2022. Another son of King Kamehameha, and out of the dual Group 1 winner Admire Groove (Jpn) (Sunday Silence, Duramente was represented by the G1 Hopeful S. winner Dura Erede (Jpn) between Christmas and New Year, and his son Titleholder (Jpn) took last season's G1 Takarazuka Kinen having become a Classic winner the previous year in the Kikuka Sho. Another Classic winner came his way in 2022 in the form of the Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) winner Stars On Earth (Jpn).

Having covered for just five seasons, Duramente leaves 725 registered offspring. His sire King Kamehameha was just behind him in sixth, and the influence of the former champion, who died in 2019, will start to wane in this table, though he will likely remain dominant through his daughters for a good while, and he was champion broodmare sire for 2022, ahead of Deep Impact, Kurofune (Jpn), and Sunday Silence.

The brilliant Triple Crown and dual Arima Kinen winner Orfevre (Jpn) managed a top-10 finish for the third year running from a personal best of fourth in 2020. On the international stage, he is best known for his 2021 GI Breeders' Cup Distaff winner Marche Lorraine (Jpn), one of his four Group/Grade 1 winners, including recent Tokyo Daishoten winner Ushba Tesoro (Jpn). That latest top-level winner came a day after he had notched a first Group I winner as a broodmare sire through the aforementioned Dura Ede.

Rulership (Jpn), too, is a perennial top-10 dweller and is the third of King Kamehameha's sons towards the top of the list. He appears to work well with mares by Sunday Silence and his sons–though they are not exactly in short supply–with all three of his Group 1 winners and 12 of his 16 group stakes winners having been bred on variations of this cross.

Maurice (Jpn), who spilt his six Group 1 wins equally between Japan and Hong Kong, has a similar record with his best runners. Having shuttled to Australia, he had two Group 1 winners there in 2022–Australian Derby winner Hitotsu (Aus) and Doomben 10,000 winner Mazu (Aus), along with two Group 1 winners in Japan. Arguably the most significant of these is Geraldina, the aforementioned daughter of Gentildonna.

Completing the top 10 is the veteran Daiwa Major (Jpn). The big success of 2022 for the 22-year-old son of Sunday Silence came through G1 Mile Championship winner Serifos (Jpn), giving Le Havre (Ire) a second top-level victory as broodmare sire, following his European strike in that category via Pyledriver (GB) (Harbour Watch {Ire}).

 

Biscuits Best Of The Youngsters

Three of the four leading first-season sires in Japan in 2022 were bred in America, though two of them, Shanghai Bobby in third and Declaration Of War in fourth, are only freshmen in Japanese terms, having started their careers in the US and Ireland before being exported.

Leading the group was Mind Your Biscuits, the dual G1 Golden Shaheen winner who also landed the GI Malibu S. and joined the Shadai Stallion Station upon retirement. From 76 runners last year, the son of Posse was represented by 28 winners, including the listed scorer Dermo Sotogake (Jpn) and the Group 2-placed Shomon (Jpn). Mind Your Biscuits is a great grandson of Deputy Minister, whose line has been ably represented in Japan, particularly by his son French Deputy and grandson Kurofune.

Of the homegrown young stallions in Japan, the G1 Dubai Turf winner Real Steel (Jpn) was best, finishing second behind Mind Your Biscuits with 21 winners from 67 starters but with an important Group 2 winner to his credit in All Parfait (Jpn). By Deep Impact, Real Steel owns a pedigree that will be all too familiar to breeders beyond Japan: his Niarchos-bred dam Loves Only Me (Storm Cat) has also produced Real Steel's treble Group/Grade 1-winning full-sister Loves Only You (Jpn). Their dam was unraced, but as a granddaughter of Miesque and half-sister to Group 1 winner Rumpelstiltskin (Ire) (Danehill), she was always going to be a valuable broodmare prospect and has already more than proved her worth at stud. Though the Niarchos family sold her for $900,000 to Katsumi Yoshida, their own support of Deep Impact through the same brilliant equine family was rewarded with a Classic winner in Study Of Man (Ire), who is out of Miesque's Storm Cat daughter Second Happiness and has his first-crop runners in Europe this year.

With this family also boasting Kingmambo, whose international influence stretches to Japan, largely through King Kamehameha, it is fair to expect to hear more of Real Steel and Study Of Man as the years progress.

The post Eleventh Japanese Title for Deep Impact appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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