Continuous to Return ‘Home’ for Japan Cup

The St Leger winner Continuous (Jpn), a son of the late Shadai stallion Heart's Cry (Jpn), is set to return to the land of his birth to take on Equinox (Jpn) (Kitasan Black {Jpn}) in the Japan Cup on November 26.

Fifth in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe after his Classic success, the colt missed Saturday's Champion S. with a raised temperature.

“But he's back fine, he's back cantering again, so the plan with him is to go to the Japan Cup,” said trainer Aidan O'Brien on Racing TV. 

“We were delighted with his run in the Arc. Ryan [Moore] took his time, like he always does with him, and the pace just went a little bit slow in the middle of the race and that was the way it was, but he came home very well.”

Moore is familiar with Tokyo racecourse and was aboard last year's Japan Cup winner Vela Azul (Jpn) (Eishin Flash {Jpn}) for trainer Kunihiko Watanabe. Continuous's sire ran in three consecutive Japan Cups and was beaten just a nose when second to the Luca Cumani-trained Alkaased in 2005.

O'Brien added, “It's a race we've never won and you need a good horse to win it, so it would be great if we could be competitive in it.

“It'll suit him all right, because he's a good traveller, he can handle fast and soft ground, it doesn't matter. He's got a great mind and he's got a lot of ability that horse – he's probably better than everyone thinks he is.”

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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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Haggas Has Leger Double in His Sights 

In 2017 and 2018, Aidan O'Brien won both the St Leger and Irish St Leger, first with Capri (Ire) and Order Of St George (Ire), and the following year with Kew Gardens (Ire) and Flag Of Honour (Ire). Given the dominance of both the trainer and his not-so-secret weapon Galileo (Ire), it has perhaps passed beyond being remarkable that all four of those horses are by the late former champion sire, but it is worth noting nonetheless.

This year, William Haggas will attempt to pull off that same staying Classic double. We'll let it pass that the Irish St Leger has not really been a Classic since 1983 when it was opened up to older horses. It remains an important and prestigious race with a roll of honour populated by some truly special names, including the four-time winner Vinnie Roe (Ire), Ireland's first Melbourne Cup hero Vintage Crop (GB), the brilliant Yeats (Ire), and the subsequent important National Hunt sires Turgeon and Kayf Tara (GB).

The Haggas duo of Hamish (GB) (Motivator {GB}) and Desert Hero (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) will launch respective attacks on the Curragh and Doncaster six days apart. For Hamish it is something of a revenge mission, as he was less than a length behind last year's champion stayer Kyprios (Ire) when second in last year's Irish St Leger. Since that day, the determined and quirky little horse has added another four Group 3 wins to his burgeoning record, including three on the bounce this season. 

Now seven, Hamish's popularity is growing, and he is of special importance to the Haggas family, having been bred by the trainer's 92-year-old father, Brian, in whose colours he races. Hamish is ridden each day by the trainer's wife, Maureen, with former National Hunt jockey Andrew Tinkler stepping in for most of his work mornings. 

Other members of the gelding's family have also been successful for the stable. Hamish's dam, the dual winner Tweed (GB) (Sakhee), is a half-sister to the G3 St Simon S. winner Beaten Up (GB) (Beat Hollow {GB}), who later won the G1 Doomben Cup for Chris Waller, as well as Group 3 and dual Listed winner Harris Tweed (GB) (Hernando {Fr}), and Vow (GB) (Motivator {GB}), who won the Lingfield Oaks Trial before finishing fourth in the Oaks. The Scottish theme in the naming is derived from Haggas snr's former ownership of the Kenneth Mackenzie mill in Stornoway, which is the oldest producer of the famed Harris Tweed cloth in the Outer Hebrides.

A fearless and accomplished horsewoman, Maureen Haggas has worked out that the path of least resistance is key to getting the best out of Hamish. She clearly dotes on him, all the while putting up with his foibles. With nine wins from 17 starts and more than £600,000 in earnings, Hamish can by now be forgiven the odd flash of recalcitrance. After all, what happens on the track is what matters most, and there, once he has deigned to enter the stalls, he is all heart.

“I've ridden him since he was a three-year-old when he was a bit tricky and didn't really want to go anywhere or do anything,” Maureen recalls. “They are all funny about the stalls, the whole family. The first time he ran he went to Redcar and he wouldn't go in, so we always have someone with him at the stalls.”

That said, he still managed to win three times as a three-year-old, breaking his maiden at Windsor over 1m2f before stepping up to 1m6f to score twice at his owner's and trainer's beloved York. Making just one start in the delayed season of 2020, when fourth in the G2 Hardwicke S., Hamish then suffered a tendon injury which kept him off the track for more than a year. When he returned to win the G3 September S. on his first run after a 442-day hiatus, he posted what now looks in hindsight a terrific piece of form, as behind him that day was the subsequent dual Group 1 winner Hukum (GB).

“He's an interesting character,” Maureen continues. “You've got to pretty much let him do his own thing most of the time. You could fight with him from the minute you went in to him to the minute you put him away, if you were that way inclined. But as long as he goes out, does his work and comes home, then I'd rather leave him be and let him do his own thing. It's just keeping him happy, really. He's seven now, so he knows all about it.”

She adds, “He never gets tired, he's a really natural athlete, which not every horse is.  He has a good, easy gait, and it's just easy for him.

“The ground is crucial. He sat all summer last year and did nothing, but we had no option. We've been a bit luckier this year, but it really is important that he has a bit of cut in the ground.”

Haggas's St Leger candidate, Desert Hero, is a horse who has already put him in the good books by providing his owners, the King and Queen, with a first Royal Ascot winner. Then, like Hamish, he struck at Group 3 level at Glorious Goodwood to win the Gordon S. and put himself firmly in the picture for the final Classic of the season.

The last time there was a royal winner of the St Leger was in the Queen's Silver Jubilee year of 1977, when Her Majesty's filly Dunfermline (GB) followed up on her victory in the Oaks. A link to the present day is provided by the fact that Desert Hero is ridden at home by Luke Carson, the grandson of Dunfermline's jockey Willie Carson. 

“What can you say? It's what dreams are made of, that you have a runner for the King at Royal Ascot,” says Carson jnr.

“We went to Ascot quietly confident and he was an absolute diamond. He put his head down. He tried really hard. You couldn't ask for any more.”

Haggas would obviously like to ask for more, and a win in the oldest Classic in his home county of Yorkshire might be just the ticket in the season following the retirement of former stable star Baaeed (GB), who, like Desert Hero, is a son of Sea The Stars. Desert Hero won twice last year and was third to Silver Knott in the G3 Solario S., but he gave his trainer pause for thought earlier this year after not wintering particularly well.

“He had a poor winter and a moderate spring,” Haggas notes. “We ran him at Newbury to try to goad him into action because we weren't getting anywhere, and he ran okay at Newbury actually. 

“Ever since then he has started to thrive. We hoped that the handicap at Ascot might be the right race for him and he did very well to win. They went very fast, and it may have flattered the horses that came from the back, but all the horses in the front at the end came from the back at the top of the straight. Then I thought it was a good win at Goodwood.”

And as the first anniversary of the Queen's death approaches, a week before the St Leger, a major victory for the Royal Studs would be welcomed by plenty in the racing world.

Haggas adds, “I think it's really important for everyone, and it's especially important for the King and the Queen. And the fact that we're training Desert Hero is just lucky for us because it's important that they have some success. Obviously the late Queen bred Desert Hero, so that's poignant in itself, and now they're taking up the mantle with gusto and enjoying every minute.”

 

 

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