Iida A Success Story at Home and Abroad

by Michele MacDonald
 
Both a bold visionary who steps beyond the ordinary bounds of his peers and a firm traditionalist who holds tight to aspects of his centuries-old culture, Dr. Masatake Iida is a rare breed. 

Not only does he rank among Japan’s leading breeders and owners under the banner of his Chiyoda Farm, Iida is one of just a handful of Japanese who also breeds and races in the United States. 

While he has made a mark by swooping in and buying some well-bred and expensive mares, such as Grade I winner Lady Joanne (Orientate), for whom he paid $1.6 million at Fasig-Tipton in 2009, over the next week he will concentrate his trademark high-octane energy on selling. 

With plans to arrive in Lexington three days prior to the opening session, Iida has four yearlings he bred in America consigned to the Keeneland September sale through his longtime associates at Taylor Made Farm. The star of that group is a fancy bay colt by Street Cry (Ire) out of Million Gift (Jpn) (Sunday Silence), a half sister to champion Sky Beauty (Bushing Groom {Fr}) and a full sister to the dam of Tale of Ekati (Tale of the Cat) from the rich family of champions Gold Beauty (Mr. Prospector) and Dayjur (Danzig). 

That colt will sell as hip 70 (Keeneland pedigree) during today’s opening session and he will be immediately followed into the ring by Iida’s Street Sense filly out of Million Gift’s stakes-winning daughter Million Seller (A.P. Indy) (hip 71) (Keeneland pedigree). The filly’s catalog page also features marquee names like Grade I winners Point of Entry (Dynaformer), Violence (Medaglia d’Oro), Pleasant Home (Seeking the Gold), Maplejinsky (Nijinsky II) and Pine Island (Arch). Both horses will be offered by Taylor Made. 

Considering the distance, language barriers and financial issues involved in operating stables in two such different domains as the U.S. and Japan, it takes more than the keen horsemanship Iida has developed since he began riding as a child of three. He relies on what he calls his “Samurai spirit,” a fierce determination to breed or race better horses each year despite such challenges and some inevitable adversity. 

“I want to keep on fighting every day,” Iida said during an interview aided with translation from English-speaking, Japanese-based bloodstock agent Taki Murayama. 

“He is a very energetic guy, and all of his energies go to the horses,” another longtime associate, Nobu Araki of Polo Green Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, said with a fond laugh. “Basically, he has no hobbies or anything–it’s all about the horses with him. His wife even told me that their honeymoon was spent going to the sales at Tattersalls.” 
Iida’s path to the Thoroughbred business was perhaps predestined, as he represents the third generation of his family to run the Chiyoda enterprise. His grandfather began the farm as a hobby, he said, and then his mother, Masako, took over in concert with her husband, the late veterinarian Dr. Tadashi Iida. 

The Chiyoda name originates from a district in central Tokyo where the Imperial Palace and other landmarks are located. Some translations define the name’s meaning as “field of a thousand generations.” 

The first part of what is now a two-farm venture was established in 1945 after the end of World War II in Chiba prefecture, not far from where Narita International Airport was later built. The second branch of Chiyoda Farm was opened in 1966 in Shizunai, now a center of Japan’s Thoroughbred breeding on the island of Hokkaido, and currently has 180 stalls, compared to 50 at the Chiba facility. 

Both farms feature training tracks, and the Shizunai branch became known as the first in Japan to construct a covered uphill gallop, ideal for training in Hokkaido’s snowy winters, about 20 years ago. 

The farm’s website declares that Chiyoda is “where horses reign supreme,” and the Iida family’s underlying passion becomes clear as soon as visitors arrive. Iida maintains a spacious home adjacent to broodmare barns and overlooking a 1000-meter oval track, all surrounded by trees and lush greenery. 

Some of the best runners bred and raced by the family include Japan’s 2002 champion juvenile filly Peace of World (Jpn) (Sunday Silence), 2002 Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) winner Smile Tomorrow (White Muzzle {GB}), and domestic Group 1 winner Talented Girl (Jpn) (Remand {GB}). But perhaps none of the horses who have resided at the farm has been treasured any more than Lady Joanne, the daughter of 2011 American Broodmare of the Year Oatsee (Unbridled) whose half-brother Shackleford (Forestry) fortuitously earned victories in the GI Preakness S. and GI Metropolitan H. following Iida’s purchase. 

“I liked her very much as an individual so that’s why I bought her,” Iida recalled in late July while stroking ten-year-old Lady Joanne’s white striped face as her strapping colt by Deep Impact (Jpn) tried to nuzzle him. Lady Joanne has produced three consecutive foals by Deep Impact, is back in foal to Japan’s leading sire and will be bred to him “forever,” he said. 

Last November at Keeneland, Iida also bought Lady Joanne’s daughter, Above Heaven (Mr. Greeley), paying $310,000 with intentions of breeding her to Tapit, and he has bought two shares in Shackleford, demonstrating his ongoing interest in breeding at elite levels both in the U.S. and Japan. 

Chiyoda Farm ranked seventh among all Japanese breeders in 2013, with runners earning ¥967,146,000 (about $9.2 million under current exchange rates). Through the end of August, Chiyoda ranked sixth among breeders in 2014 with earnings of ¥723,537,000 (about $6.9 million). 

The key turning point of Iida’s life in terms of how it affected Chiyoda’s fortunes occurred when he decided to follow his father’s study of veterinary medicine and opted to do his mandatory farm work-study program in the U.S. at Claiborne Farm. 

During a month in the summer of 1977, Iida absorbed as much as he could at Claiborne, including observing the first days of eventual superstar Nureyev. “Everyone was talking about him just after he was born. They knew he was special,” Iida recalled. 

He toured many Lexington studs to inspect stallions and was particularly awed by the imposing frame of Spendthrift’s Raise a Native and the special qualities of Claiborne’s Nijinsky II. 

When Iida left Kentucky, he spent some time galloping horses in Newmarket, but his experiences with American horses lingered in his mind, constantly influencing his initiatives in developing Chiyoda as the years unfolded. He began to focus on acquiring American mares, he bought shares in prominent stallions A.P. Indy and Unbridled’s Song, and he occasionally sent some mares from Japan to the U.S. for breeding in order to broaden Chiyoda’s bloodlines. 
His instincts, and good luck, have blessed him even when careful plans may have failed. 

When he was unable to follow through on plans to ship Talented Girl to America to be bred to Gulch due to a veterinary issue, he sent her to Europe, where she was covered by Nashwan and later produced a filly, Eminent Girl (GB). 

Dispatched to Japan, Eminent Girl was bred to Sunday Silence and foaled Global Peace (Jpn), who became the dam of Chiyoda-bred filly Whale Capture (Jpn) (Kurofune), a Group 1 winner and earner of ¥512,684,000 who was good enough as a juvenile to defeat eventual Triple Crown winner Orfevre (Jpn) (Stay Gold {Jpn}). 

At the time Talented Girl took her trip abroad, “everyone (in Japan) said I was stupid and that I should have kept her in Japan,” Iida said with a chuckle. Undaunted, he continued to follow his internationally oriented course. 

“I believed I needed to expand my broodmares and breed them to other stallions because if I bred only to Japanese stallions, their pedigrees would have become too compact,” he said. “And pedigree is the most important part of the broodmare.” 

Some of the mares Iida has acquired in the U.S. in order to bolster Chiyoda’s breeding operation would be valued by any breeder, such as: 

Star of Sapphire (Tapit), a full sister to Grade I winner Zazu and Grade II winner Flashback, who was a $350,000 purchase at Keeneland in 2011 and who has produced three foals in Japan including a 2014 filly by Empire Maker; 
Unbridled Breeze (Unbridled), a full sister to champion Banshee Breeze who was a $340,000 purchase at Keeneland from the Overbrook Farm dispersal; 
Home Sweet Home (Seeking the Gold), a full sister to Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner Pleasant Home and to the dam of Point of Entry and Pine Island; 
Reve de Fille (Storm Cat), a daughter of three-time European champion Bosra Sham (Woodman), and 
Sparkle Jewel (Unbridled’s Song), a $300,000 yearling purchase whose Grade I-winning half sister Golden Ballet (Moscow Ballet) later produced Belmont Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Drosselmeyer (Distorted Humor).

In taking such quality mares to Japan, Iida is able to offer new bloodlines for the many Sunday Silence-line stallions who dominate that market and gain robust sale prices for their offspring due to Japan’s high purse structure and correspondingly lofty commercial market. Sometimes, such as with Million Gift, he will send some of Chiyoda’s Japanese-bred mares to the U.S. for commercial breeding. 

Iida connected with the Taylor family some two decades ago, and as Araki noted, “he is the kind of guy who is loyal and sticks with people,” thus Taylor Made continues to consign his horses at American sales. But Iida also is the type of person “who likes to do things himself,” Araki noted, and he has been coming to yearling and bloodstock sales in Kentucky for 15 consecutive years to personally stay on top of the scene. 

“He’s the greatest,” said Frank Taylor, who oversees six Iida mares boarded at Taylor Made, while Araki cares for others at Polo Green. “He is a really good horseman. He’s got a good eye for a horse and he loves buying out of good families.”
Taylor described Iida’s Street Cry colt in the September sale as “a really good colt, probably the best colt” produced so far by Million Gift, who has delivered mainly fillies, including a full sister to Million Seller named Indy’s Million who was sold to Charles Fipke for $750,000 at the 2012 September sale. 

In addition to the two Book 1 yearlings Iida has in this year’s September sale, Taylor Made also will handle two others in Book 6: hip 3852 an Old Fashioned colt out of stakes winner Hishi Nile (A.P. Indy), a half sister to Japanese champion Hishi Amazon (Theatrical {Ire}), and hip 3972, a Corinthian colt. 

Before he even reached Lexington, Iida already had experienced a busy sale season, offering horses at three key auctions in Hokkaido during July and August. Chiyoda sold 12 foals and yearlings at the premier Japan Racing Horse Association select sale for a total of ¥528.5 million ($4,808,595) and an average price of ¥44,041,666 (about $400,716). 
Buyers patronizing Chiyoda this summer included some of Japan’s most prominent owners, such as Takaya Shimakawa, who paid ¥60 million ($588,236) for a Deep Impact colt foal out of Sparkle Jewel, as well as Qatar’s Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, who bought a King Kamehameha (Jpn) colt foal for ¥47 million ($460,785). 

Even while focused on other sale goals, Iida is not afraid to buy a horse he sees and likes, as he did with a weanling Elusive Quality colt at Keeneland in 2011 who was out of a half-sister to Japanese champion Hishi Akebono (Woodman). Iida bought that colt even though he knew he tested positive for EVA and thus could not be exported to Japan. 

Fittingly, the name Iida gave the colt, Otokogi, means “Samurai spirit.” In April, Otokogi displayed that spirit with a game maiden special weight victory at Keeneland for Iida and trainer Graham Motion (video). 

Among other horses Iida has in training are Omotenashi (Henrythenavigator), a 2-year-old filly out of Million Gift who is with Roger Varian in England and whose name refers to the essence of Japanese hospitality. 

Chiyoda also races about 30 to 35 horses a year in Japan from its breeding program and offers some in special syndicate deals, with partners gaining discounts as they buy shares in multiple horses. Thus, while Chiyoda may not rival Japan’s leading owners and breeders Northern and Shadai Farms, it is a potent force. 

“One day I looked at my books and got a headache because I had too many horses,” Iida said with a smile. “But if I like a horse, I will never sell it. That is the Samurai spirit.”