With Japan’s top international race taking place at the weekend, Nicholas Godfrey looks at the task facing overseas runners in Tokyo – and traces the nation’s emergence as a racing superpower
One of the world’s foremost international races takes place on Sunday [Nov 27] with the 42nd edition of the Japan Cup at Tokyo racecourse, the Japan Racing Association’s showpiece venue located in the western suburb of Fuchu.
Many things about the famous race are massive, most obviously a truly spectacular venue boasting the biggest capacity of any of the world’s racetracks. Mind you, though the published capacity is 223,000 following a seven-year renovation project completed in April 2007, the record gate was only 196,517 for the Tokyo Yushun (Japanese Derby) in May 1990.
Then we get to prize-money, which at an advertised ¥864million sits comfortably in the world’s Top Ten richest races. Even allowing for weakness in the yen that rendered a trip to the Breeders’ Cup an expensive option for the Japanese racing community, this is still equivalent to about $6.15m – a greater sum than any race in North America, where the Breeders’ Cup Classic leads the way at $6m after the arriviste rise and rapid fall of the Pegasus World Cup. At €5 the Qatar-backed Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is Europe’s only entry in the Top Ten.
A prize well worth winning
It’s a prize well worth winning – and, as far as overseas horses are concerned, it has become nigh on impossible. A total of four overseas runners – three from France and one from Germany – will line up on Sunday.
Hardy annual Grand Glory returns after coming fifth last term, while Onesto is chasing a €2.5m bonus on offer to the Grand Prix de Paris winner. Second in the Irish Champion Stakes, he has a considerable advantage via the booking of five-time JRA champ Christophe Lemaire.
Prix Niel winner Simca Mille completes the French team while progressive Tunnes, a half-brother to Arc winner Torquator Tasso, is unbeaten in Germany and won an admittedly weak-looking G1 event by 10 lengths on heavy ground in Munich earlier this month.
They’re probably picking the right year to take on a home team likely denuded of superstars. A couple of the better options shot their bolt in the Arc and now await other challenges, while the Classic crop looks short on serious representatives, although Danon Beluga will be well fancied after coming third in the Tenno Sho.
Then again, even a substandard domestic defence also features Dubai Sheema Classic hero Shahryar and a pair of Oaks winners in Uberleben and Daring Tact.
As such, reaching the first three looks more achievable than usual. Actually winning, however, would surely represent a feat of sizeable proportions because times really have changed – and not least when it comes to US interest in the Japan Cup.
No race on the planet can boast a roll of honour as cosmopolitan; with a nod to the Washington DC International, this was a global race virtually before the concept truly existed. Including the inaugural running in 1981, in its first decade the Japan Cup was won by horses from seven different countries covering four continents, with the host nation being joined by the US, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Britian and France; Germany and Italy also supplied winners in later years.
Easy money for the US – and beyond
North America used to have an enviable record. Before European horses were invited, Mairzy Doates claimed the inaugural running in 1981 under Cash Asmussen for trainer John Fulton; in second was Canadian-trained Frost King, with another US visitor, The Very One third.
Stanley Hough-trained Half Iced followed up for America under Don MacBeth, with Pay The Butler scoring for Bobby Frankel and Chris McCarron in 1988 and Golden Pheasant becoming a fourth American winner (for Charlie Whittingham and Gary Stevens, no less) in 1991.
There was also American success in the early years of the Japan Cup’s dirt counterpart, where Fleetstreet Dancer scored for Doug O’Neill in 2003.
So far, so lucrative; easy money, seemingly – but it didn’t last. The lure of Far East lucre has been less obvious more recently with US runners a distinct rarity at the Japan Cup (and no repeat in the dirt race, now known as the Champions Cup).
Indeed, top-class overseas runners from anywhere have become notable only for their absence in Japan’s top international race. Alpinista, mentioned as a possible to chase a hefty bonus on offer to the Arc winner, would have bucked that trend if she hadn’t been ruled out – a development that would have surprised nobody familiar with the European scene. She’s been retired.
A race once marked for export on an annual basis hasn’t had an overseas winner since the Luca Cumani-trained Alkaased touched off Heart’s Cry in 2005 under Frankie Dettori. Conduit, fourth in 2009, was the last European-trained horse even to make the frame, such is the strength of the domestic middle-distance crop.
Looking at Japan Cup results since the turn of the century, it is hard to conceive quite how easy the pickings used to be for such a lucrative prize, which went to visitors eight times in the first decade of its 38 runnings.
Doubtless the advent of lucrative alternative opportunities on turf in other places, notably Hong Kong and Dubai, has served to dilute the strength of the raiding parties but that is only part of the story.
Much harder to win
Put simply, the Japan Cup is just harder – much harder – to win nowadays, such has been the upturn in the quality of domestic stock after decades of concerted effort to ensure they can dine at racing’s top table.
Even though Japan’s state-funded industry was far from immune to the worldwide economic downturn after the turn of the century, understandably the nation remains the envy of most other racing jurisdictions.
According to figures published by the JRA, annual betting turnover for 2021 was just over three trillion yen (about $21.4bn/£18bn) – well below its 1997 high of four trillion yen (about £30bn at the time) but still three times the most recent IFHA-documented figure for US turnover on racing.
Japanese prize-money is close to the record 120bn yen ($1.06bn/£912m) of 2000 and – even if attendance figures have halved in the last 20 years to about 6.2m in 2019 (before behind-closed-doors COVID cards) – the sport remains hugely popular.
How racing should be run
While things aren't as peachy as they once were in Japanese racing, I vividly recall speaking to Ryan Moore during one visit to the Japan Cup a few years ago as he gazed up at the colossal nine-floor Fuji View grandstand in front of a parade ring festooned in homemade banners lauding heroes equine and human.
“This is how racing should be run really,” mused one of the world’s most decorated riders. “They are very lucky – they do everything the correct way. The racing is well run, they have nice horses and great prize-money – and it makes for very competitive racing.”
If racing boomed at home in the latter years of the 20th century, the creation of the Japan Cup in 1981 marked the first stirrings of a more outward-looking attitude in the Japanese racing industry, previously a closed shop with overseas runners barred.
It was soon to be accompanied by a sea-change in Japanese breeding and racing when almost unlimited financial muscle prompted an exodus of potential stallion talent from Europe to Japan. For a while, it felt as if no sooner had a Derby winner passed the post at Epsom than it was on a plane bound for the Far East.
Matchless blend of class, speed and agility
But it was an American horse who was to be the founding father of Japan’s racing miracle in the shape of 1989 Kentucky Derby winner Sunday Silence, celebrated for engendering a matchless blend of class, speed and agility in his offspring and untouched for several years as champion sire before his death in 2002. The only horse to have outshone Sunday Silence is his legendary son Deep Impact, the storied Triple Crown winner who still casts a long shadow on Japanese racing and bloodstock following his premature death in July 2019.
Such immense levels of investment in the breeding industry over several decades produced the desired result, improving Japanese stock out of all recognition. Japan has been utterly transformed from a relative outpost to a global powerhouse.
With special emphasis on the nature’s ultra-powerful middle-distance division, nowhere is this dramatic improvement more visible than in the international arena, which is why this year’s dismal presence at the Breeders’ Cup looks like a blip instead of any regression to their US mean.
That historic double at Del Mar in 2021 with Loves Only You and Marche Lorraine seemed destined to open the floodgates for Japanese runners at the US championships but it clearly didn’t happen at Keeneland, where five-year-old sprint mare Chain Of Love was the sole representative. She finished well-beaten 10th of 12 as a relative outsider in the Filly & Mare Sprint.
Myriad reasons can be cited for this, the weakening value of the yen high on the list. After starring in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Dubai, Japanese horses also haven’t found things quite as easy in Europe as in the rest of the world, which may have dampened confidence for a visit to the States.
A couple of likely Breeders’ Cup suspects wasted a potential Breeders’ Cup effort in testing ground in the Arc – Titleholder would have had a favourite’s chance here in the Turf – while top-class pair Songline and Authority were both due to run at Keeneland before setbacks scuppered their chances.
Rest assured, they’ll be back – write off the Japanese at your peril back in California at the 2023 Breeders’ Cup.
• Visit the Japan Racing Association website
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