YOSHIDA: AN INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS STORY
By DWC Notes Team Member Keith McCalmont
The globalisation of horseracing is never more apparent than at international events such as the Dubai World Cup. On Saturday, horses from around the world will test their mettle against the best of their generation while an audience watches on TV and engages with trainers, owners and journalists on social media.
For Elliott Walden, President, CEO and Racing Manager for WinStar Farm, the decision to make the long journey from Versailles, Kentucky to Dubai was as much for the joy of the sport as it was to oversee the preparation of not one, but two $12 million Dubai World Cup sponsored by Emirates Airline contenders in Yoshida and Audible.
“It’s fun. Horse racing has become international. For years, I think it was insular to wherever you were,” Walden said. “Now, the game has changed and there are so many more opportunities to run internationally. It’s easier to ship. Everyone is so accommodating. The horses adapt a whole lot better than the people do most of the time.”
Yoshida, a Grade 1 winner on turf and dirt in the USA, was bred in Japan by Northern Farm. The striking 5-year-old bay embodies just how significantly the racing business has changed in recent years as WinStar, one of the largest racing and breeding operations in America, has invested significantly in international bloodstock in both Japan and Australia.
Yoshida is sired by Heart’s Cry, a son of the great Sunday Silence who in 1989 captured two-thirds of the US Triple Crown, winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness before being denied in the Belmont by Easy Goer.
Sunday Silence went on to enduring success at stud in Japan where his son, Deep Impact, makes a lasting impression on a generation of their great horses.
“We bought him (Yoshida) on purpose. We went to Japan and were looking for some Sunday Silence blood. We couldn’t quite afford the Deep Impacts at the time. They’re very hard to buy,” Walden said. “We landed on Yoshida. He’s out of a Grade 1 winner on the dirt at Saratoga – Hilda’s Passion won the Ballerina. I felt there might be some dirt possibilities in his future and we were hoping that if he were able to do his job on the racetrack that he would be very attractive to American breeders.”
Yoshida has more than proven his worth on the racetrack with a record of five wins and three seconds from 13 starts, including Grade 1 scores in the Turf Classic at Churchill Downs and the Woodward on the Saratoga main track when making his dirt debut.
Conditioned by world-renowned trainer Bill Mott, Yoshida proved his dirt form was no fluke by rallying to finish fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, defeated less than two lengths after a wide trip.
“The Woodward was a really good race, but the Breeders’ Cup Classic he was very wide and was right there, getting beat a length and three-quarters to Accelerate. I thought he was going to win it at the eighth (200m) pole. He ran very well,” Walden said.
On Saturday, following a sixth-place run in the Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational that can be dismissed given the saturated state of the course, Yoshida will return to the dirt as he looks to add to stallion credentials that Walden believes are important to the future of the breed.
“I think that he brings something back to the breed,” Walden said. “Having some international bloodlines coming back – they’ve been going the other way for 30 years – bringing them back, I think, makes some sense.”
Racing for a partnership group that includes China Horse Club International Ltd., Starlight Racing, and Head of Plains Partners, adds to the excitement for Walden while also pushing the game forward.
It’s a business strategy that paid great dividends last year for the WinStar team with Triple Crown champion Justify, who was owned with a variety of partners.
“I think spreading the risk on horses is something that makes a lot of sense because the entertainment value you can get out of being here (in Dubai), whether you’re a single owner or own a 20th, is not a whole lot different as long as you can get along,” Walden said. “One of the blessings of what we had going on with Justify and Audible is that we all got along great.
“A lot of times, the faster the horse gets, the tougher the relationship gets,” Walden added. “But, it didn’t go that way last year.”
A victory in Saturday’s Dubai World Cup would signal a new path to success in racing and breeding, while simultaneously announcing to the racing world that Yoshida, set to retire to stud at WinStar at the end of the 2019 racing season, has arrived.
And it would be very fitting that a product of the great Sunday Silence line, named for Japan’s largest breeding operation, would be the flag-bearer for WinStar’s foray into the globalisation of the breeding market.
“We are very honoured that he’s a Japanese-bred. We named him for Katsumi Yoshida, his breeder at Northern Farm, and his brother Teruya,” Walden said. “I asked them when we bought him if we could name him. They said yes, and it worked out. Very rarely do you name an unproven yearling a name like that and it works out, but it did.”
NORTH AMERICA READY TO TAKE ON THE WORLD
By DWC Notes Team Member Ed Prosser
No trainer or jockey in Saturday’s Dubai World Cup sponsored by Emirates Airline can boast greater attachments to the famous race than Satish Seemar and Richard Mullen, connections of North America.
Seemar’s training career has grown hand in hand with Dubai’s fabulous racing industry while the country has been Mullen’s base for two decades.
“I’ve spent 28 years of my life here and I’m very emotional about the place,” said Seemar, who trains from the immaculate Zabeel Stables in the heart of downtown Dubai. “I want to win the race more for that reason than anything. People in Dubai support my horses because of that.”
North America, who appears better than ever at the age of seven, has had a dream run this season with facile victories in the first two legs of the Al Maktoum challenge at Meydan before being given a break to go fresh into Saturday’s race.
Seemar was lucky to be the first person up when picking post 3 at Wednesday’s draw ceremony and he is hoping that there will not be a repeat of last year’s events, when his stable flagbearer trailed in last behind Thunder Snow when getting left in the starting gates.
Seemar has no longer uses the ear plugs that North America used to sport and has gone to great lengths to get the horse accustomed to the noise he will experience in front of a huge crowd on World Cup night.
“I’m normally not nervous but I’ve been bitten last year and I’m keeping a lid on it because of that,” admitted Seemar. “What happened then will always live with me. I should have had a person in the gate holding him and should also have thought about the sound.
“But we’ve learned from our mistakes, and will be leaving a handler in the stalls and taking his ear plugs off. We’ve educated him with the noise, we’ve taken him for schooling with the music blasting and it doesn’t bother him.”
North America had his final major workout at Zabeel Stables on Monday and has just been kept ticking over since by connections as they count down to the big race.
“We’ve got a good draw and normally if he jumps out well it’s ‘catch me if you can’,” added Seemar. “Overall for his age he’s quite a lightly-raced horse and it’s an open race.”
For Mullen, who also has made Dubai his home, success on Saturday would also mean a huge amount.
“I’ve never shone away from the fact that this is the one I’ve really wanted to win,” said the Englishman. “Dubai has been my home for 20 years. I’ve been involved with Satish for 15 years – which is very unusual for a trainer/jockey relationship – and I’d love to give him something back.
“It’s the one race that obviously financially sets you up but it’s also about the prestige – it’s the world’s biggest race. Other people may want to win the English classics or the Kentucky Derby but it’s the one I most want to with.
“You’ve got the best horses from around the world competing on the one stage and the best jockeys as well.”
HEAD READY TO RUN LIKE THE WIND
By DWC Notes Team Member Liz Price
Four years after making headlines on Dubai World Cup night with Solow’s emphatic victory in the Group 1 Dubai Turf Sponsored By DP World, French handler Freddy Head is returning to Meydan with another leading candidate.
This time it is the Group 1-winning stayer Call The Wind, who is lining up at the start of the Dubai Gold Cup sponsored by Al Tayer Motors (G2). Just like Solow, Call The Wind is a gelding, but that is where the similarities end. A son of Frankel and In Clover, the now 5-year-old is a half-brother to Group 1-winning fillies With You and We Are and only made his racecourse debut in March last year.
Head explains: “He was a very late developer with a fabulous pedigree and we had high hopes for him. But he took his time to come to hand and then he refused to enter the stalls. I don’t know why, but he was afraid to go into them.”
In March 2018, with Call The Wind showing all the right signs of being ready to run, Head then had the genius idea of starting Call The Wind’s career on a racecourse that operated without starting gates. With 236 racecourses in France to chose from, he found a little-known track in Machecoul, a small town on the west coast of France, just below Brittany that has about 5000 inhabitants.
There, Call the Wind made a rather unassuming debut as he finished third in a 2000m race. “Yes, he went to Machecoul and then his next start was in Compiegne,” recounts Head with fondness. “Little by little we had schooled him at home and he overcame his fear. He does go into the stalls with a blanket, but it’s not a problem anymore.”
After running over 2000 and 2400m for the first half of the season, George Strawbridge’s gelding then had a little break over the summer before coming back with a bang. Spending some time by the sea at Deauville obviously did him a world of good and he won his first race and another one in quick succession during the month of August.
“I knew he had stamina,” his handler continues. “So we ran him in the Group 1 Prix du Cadran at ParisLongchamp. And even though it was the first time he ran over 4000m he won. And he won well.”
Never having run as a two or 3-year-old, Call the Wind did not only step up in trip, he also made a huge jump in class, as he had never even run in Listed race beforehand. It has been quite the fairytale and his trainer is hoping to continue in the same vein this year: “We decided during the winter that he should run in Dubai. He’s had a really good winter and I really feel like the horse is in great form. He is maybe even improving. He ran the other day at Chantilly over 1900m on the all-weather track and that was a good performance. I’m hoping for an even better one in Dubai.”
A runner-up to the Andre Fabre trained Trais Fluors that day, he did beat Soleil Marin who has since gone on to lift the Group 3 Prix Ebury. It all bodes well then for the next stage in the still fairly lightly-raced Call The Wind.
BRAVE SMASH FLIES THE FLAG FOR TWO NATIONS IN AL QUOZ
By DWC Notes Team Member Andrew Hawkins
The Japanese raiding party on the Dubai World Cup card may number nine, headlined by mighty filly Almond Eye, but the land of the rising sun was also the starting point for a 10th galloper aiming at Saturday’s Meydan meeting, with Brave Smash set to fly the flag for Australia in the Al Quoz Sprint sponsored by Azizi Developments (G1).
While Japanese horses are plentiful on the world stage, targeting many of the biggest meetings on the planet, it is a rarity to see them sold to continue their careers abroad. It was a market that Jamie Lovett, director of Australian Bloodstock, saw as a potential opportunity.
“Most of our early success came through Europe,” Lovett said. “We wanted to search in markets that had been overlooked a bit in Australia and hopefully find horses that profiled well for some of our bigger races down under. Germany was an early starting point for us, we bought a horse called Lucas Cranach who ran third in the Melbourne Cup and it was only a couple of years later we bought Protectionist out of Germany and he won the Melbourne Cup.
“We had a number of nice fillies too, including a couple of German Oaks winners like Salomina and Turfdonna. We sold them to Katsumi Yoshida, which opened a door in Japan that we hoped to explore.”
The first Japanese horse purchased by Australian Bloodstock was Tosen Stardom, a Group 3 winner in his homeland who developed into a two-time Group 1 victor in Melbourne.
“When Brave Smash came onto the scene, we were in the midst of having quite a bit of success with Tosen Stardom,” Lovett said. “It had been announced that there would be a new race in Sydney, the Everest, that would now be Australia’s richest race and we were trying to find a horse for that. We watched a lot of videos, trying to find a horse that might have fallen through the cracks up there and Brave Smash just stood out.
“He’d been tried as a stayer as a 3-year-old, he was tested in the Japanese Derby and he was tailed off. He’d barely been tried below a mile (1600m) but the one time they did, they ran 1m 08s and he was beaten three-quarters of a length. We thought he’d make a nice sprinting prospect and the rest is history.”
Since first stepping out in Australia in August 2017, Brave Smash has built up a record of three wins and nine placings from 20 starts, with his successes including Group 1 victories in the 1400m Futurity Stakes and the 1200m Manikato Stakes last year.
“When you pull up his record, he’s a very, very good horse,” Lovett said. “He’s run in all of the best 1200m and 1400m races in Australia and he rarely runs a bad race. Even away from his wins, he’s been placed in an Everest, he’s placed in two Newmarkets, that’s not easy.”
The Newmarket Handicap (G1) is perhaps Australia’s most time-honoured sprint and Lovett believes Brave Smash’s last-start third when near the top of the weights, spotting winner Sunlight 6.5kg, shapes as a good formline for Saturday’s Al Quoz Sprint – particularly given Sunlight has since added another Group 1, the William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley, to her record.
“I know Blue Point is a very good horse, but he’s also got his vulnerabilities too,” Lovett said. “To be honest, I’ll be disappointed if we don’t finish top three. I truly believe he’s that good a horse that he should be in the finish. He’s really in a good place at the moment, he’s travelled well and he should have every opportunity to perform.”
At the conclusion of the southern hemisphere racing season in July, Brave Smash will begin the next phase of his career, with one of Australia’s newest studs Aquis Farm acquiring a stake late last year.
The Hong Kong-owned, Queensland-based Aquis Farm have made a splash in Australia very quickly and have high hopes of taking Royal Ascot by storm in June.
Already confirmed for the same owners is speedy filly Houtzen, who has the King’s Stand Stakes (G1) as her aim, but Lovett says that his ownership partners are hopeful of having Brave Smash step out in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes (G1).
“For them, Royal Ascot is a priority and they are quite keen to have Brave Smash there,” he said. “We’ll see how he runs on the weekend, but if he runs well, I’d suggest he goes there before the breeding season down under.”