Lucas Marquardt in Japan: Six On In for Japan’s Big Three

The barrier draw for Sunday’s $4.4-million G1 Japan Cup was held Thursday afternoon in Tokyo, with veteran local heroes Just a Way (Jpn) (Heart’s Cry {Jpn}) and Gentildonna (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) drawing the one and three holes, respectively, and star 3-year-old filly Harp Star (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) landing in post six. The latter, sixth in the G1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, has been tabbed as the 3-1 pick on williamhill.com. The other two pegged are pegged as the 9-2 co-second choices. 

“I am relieved to say she came back from her French excursion without mishap,” trainer Hiroyoshi Matsuda said of Harp Star, who won the G1 Oka Sho (Japanese 1000 Guineas) in April before beating Gold Ship (Jpn) (Stay Gold {Jpn}) on the square in the G1 Sapporo Kinen two starts later in late August. “She’s in good shape and I think she’ll be able to put up a decent fight,” added Matsuda. 

Gentildonna became the first horse ever to repeat in the Japan Cup after using post 15 in 2012 and post seven in 2013 as springboards to success. The 5-year-old mare, most recently runner-up in the G1 Tenno Sho (Autumn) at Tokyo Nov. 2, won the G1 Dubai Sheema Classic in late March. On that same card at Meydan, Just a Way dazzled in the G1 Dubai Duty Free. He enters the Japan Cup off a lackluster eighth in the Arc, and is still trying to prove that his powerful late kick can be effective at 2400 meters. 

Earlier in the day, at a press conference at Tokyo Racecourse, trainer Malcolm Pierce said he hoped for a spot somewhere in the middle of the starting gate for Up With the Birds (Stormy Atlantic). Pierce saw his wish granted when Canada’s reigning Horse of the Year drew in seven. 

“It’s going to be a big field, so…you don’t want to be on the inside and standing in the gate too long, but you also don’t want to be hung wide from post 18,” Pierce said. 

Owned and bred by Sam-Son Farms, Up With the Birds will be piloted by Eurico Rosa Da Silva. 

Godolphin’s Trading Leather (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}), who a year ago won the G1 Irish Derby for his then owner/breeder/trainer Jim Bolger–Bolger now just holds the latter two designations–drew wide in the outside post 18. From seven starters, no horse has won from post 18, nor has any of the nine starters from post 17–a spot filled this year by the Japanese-trained Uncoiled (Fr) (Giant’s Causeway). 

Other notables include the German invader Ivanhowe (Ger) (Soldier Hollow {GB}), who splits Just a Way and Gentildonna in the two hole; and the recent Tenno Sho (Autumn) hero Spielberg (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}), drawn in 15.

Can This Bird Fly in Japan? 
Mission impossible? Not quite, but without question, Canada’s reigning Horse of the Year Up With The Birds (Stormy Atlantic) faces a tall order in Sunday’s G1 Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse. The Sam-Son homebred goes up against a talented international cast that includes the likes of Gentildonna and Just a Way. Up With the Birds might be up against something else, too: the pace. A confirmed closer, Up With the Birds does his best running when allowed to settle and make a single run. And that puts him at the mercy of the leaders up front.

“His race in New York, we got so far back, and we sure don’t want to have to pass 15 horses at the head of the stretch,” pffered trainer Malcolm Pierce during yesterday’s press conference from Tokyo Racecourse. 

Pierce was referring to Up With the Birds’s latest start, a runner-up performance in the GIII Knickerbocker S. at Belmont Oct. 11. In that affair, Up With the Birds, with substitute jockey Cornelio Velasquez in the irons, sat last by a double-digit margin as the pacesetter dawdled through three quarters in 1:14 1/5. And as eventual winner Legendary (GB) (Exceed and Excel {Aus}) was just a half-length back at the quarter pole, Up With the Birds still had five or six to make up. He wound up getting to within 1 1/2 lengths of Legendary, but it was a case of too little, too late. 

“Hopefully, he’ll get going a little earlier, before the second turn, and be in the race,” added Pierce. “You wouldn’t want to have to make up six or seven lengths in the last quarter mile.” 

Pierce might as well have been talking directly to the man seated to his left, jockey Eurico Rosa Da Silva, who has ridden Up With the Birds in most of his races, including in a smart open-lengths victory in the GII Nijinsky S. at Woodbine July 19. That day, the pace couldn’t have set up better for Up With the Birds, as they carved out a 1:09 4/5 three-quarter split up front. Still, Up With the Birds was doing some serious running, shading :23 from the three-eighths pole to the eighth pole and nailing the last eighth in :12 flat to win the nine-furlong race in 1:45 3/5. Da Silva said it was about finding a balance. 

“He’s the kind of horse who likes to run relaxed and I don’t think we’ll be too close in the beginning, but when we turn home, I don’t want to see him too far back,” Da Silva explained. 

In the end, Da Silva said the decision might not be his. “It will be up to him,” he said. “He’s going to choose where he wants to be. He’s a very smart horse, and wherever he’s happy, that’s where he will be.” 

Up With the Birds, winner of the GI Jamaica H. and the Breeders S. in his championship season last year, was slow to come around in 2014. In April, he was last of six as the favorite in a salty Keeneland allowance, his first start since the Jamaica. In May, he failed to muster much of a rally when sixth again in the GII Dixie S. Up With The Birds got back on track with a stylish homecoming performance in the Nijinsky, and Pierce said it was around this time that connections started thinking seriously about Japan. “We’ve been thinking about since…before the [GI] Arlington Million,” said Pierce. “But we wanted to see how he’d perform there.” 

Up With the Birds once again found himself at a tactical disadvantage when the leaders loped along through three quarters in 1:13.67 in that Aug. 16 feature, but he came with a sustained run to be fourth while beating home last year’s winner Real Solution (Kitten’s Joy). 

“As we got closer, we got a little more serious [about Japan],” said Pierce. “The owners were invited in September, and they decided they’d like to give it a try against some of the best company in the world.”

On Sunday, they’ll find out how the competition, and the pace, suits their horse.

Thanksgiving in Tokyo…

Putting 20 or so shoeless racing journalists into a small room for 2 1/2 hours with unlimited food, sake and Sapporo probably will get you the same result as if you performed the experiment with 20 trainers or 20 bloodstock agents or 20 grooms. Stories will be told. Stories will be out-told. Stories may, at some point, be re-told, but with less of a plot line this time. People will have a great time and laugh, and you’ll once again come away with the notion that, as industries go, we’ve got a terrific bunch of characters on board. 

Thursday night, the JRA media team hosted those international journalists in town to cover the Japan Cup to a dinner. For us Americans, it was a Thanksgiving feast, I guess. 

The dinner was held not far from the press hotel, the Keio Plaza, in the Shinjuku region of Tokyo. This is best described as the midtown Manhattan of the city, a rare part of Tokyo where skyscrapers dominate the skyline and where, at night, office workers and hip teenagers and well-dressed professionals converge under the neon lights. 

A few hundred years ago, Shinjuku was a small town on the outskirts of Edo Castle, an outpost of temples and shrines. But as Tokyo expanded westward, the area was integrated into the metropolis. In 1923, Tokyo was devastated by the Great Kanto Earthquake, and afterward, the “seismically stable” area of Shinjuku became a commercial center. This stability is the reason why Shinjuku is home to the majority of Tokyo’s skyscrapers today. 

Featuring what’s claimed to be the world’s busiest train station–Shinjuku Station–Shinjuku is today a sensory overload of colors, sounds and bodies. Narrow, crooked streets break off from the Shinjuku Dori and Yasukuni Dori Avenues, the main shopping arteries, with an unfathomable array of shops, boutiques and eateries occupying not just the first floors of buildings, but as is typical of many Asian cities, the upper floors as well. 

And, as it turns out, the lower floors, too. Ducking out of the packed evening streets, we took an elevator down to a small basement restaurant, left our shoes in a small locker, and were ushered into a room with two long, low tables, each with a sunken floor beneath. Soon, two servers began shuttling in plates of food. Salads with raw tuna. Fried crab claws. Small tarts adorned with mini scallops, green olives and roe. Huge, unshucked oysters. Delicious, mild sashimi.

The main dish revolved around Nabe, a Japan hot-pot stew of stock, fish, Chinese cabbage and several other vegetables. Raw ingredients are put into a wrought-iron pot, separated by a divider, and as the broth boils, it spills into both sides and cooks your dinner in front of you. When the food is ladled out and all that’s left is the steaming stock, a bowl of rice and a raw egg are added and stirred in, creating a thick concoction that, when topped with soy sauce, was a perfect way to end the meal.

Taking my father’s cooking into consideration, this is somehow not the most unique Thanksgiving meal I’ve had, but given the company, it certainly ranked as one of the best and most memorable. Happy Thanksgiving, guys–more tomorrow…