Who is Japan’s best three-year-old on dirt? Not even a Kentucky Derby victory to either Luxor Cafe or Admire Daytona may be enough to wrest Natural Rise from that position after his dominant victory in the first leg of the NAR Triple Crown, the JPN1 Haneda Hai (1800m) at Oi Racecourse on Tuesday.
Sent off as the 1.3 favourite, it appeared on paper that the Keizo Ito-trained Natural Rise had only one danger – undefeated Janadriyah, winner of the primary lead-up, the Kumotori Sho.
However, despite racing greenly under Takeshi Yokoyama in the middle stages, Natural Rise streaked clear of his 14 rivals to win by a widening five lengths even as he hung in towards the rail. Local trainee Night Of Fire surged for a surprising second for rider Takayuki Yano, while Janadriyah and Christophe Lemaire were a disappointing third, 11 lengths behind the winner.
The packed Oi crowd chanted “Takeshi! Takeshi!” as the winner returned in front of the Tokyo City Keiba grandstand and the 26-year-old jockey admitted that it hadn’t been the easiest ride aboard the raw Natural Rise.
“I’m happy, but I’m also exhausted,” said Yokoyama. “The race overall went according to plan, he usually isn’t very quick out of the gate so I wanted to let those fast horses go and I wanted to stalk the pace. It was very hard to settle him down but he did a great job to finish off the race the way he did. Even though he drifted in quite a bit, he was just too good.
“He is still very rough, but he is progressing one step at a time. If he can continue to progress well, I will be very happy and very lucky to be his jockey.”
It was a first Group 1 or Japanese Group 1 win for Ito, who had won 22 graded stakes races previously – 21 of them on dirt.
“I have tried to win a Grade 1 race several times, but I couldn’t get it previously,” he said. “However, before this race, I was able to keep calm and I didn’t think too much about it. I felt his odds were a little bit too low, so I was really relieved that he could win.”
Natural Rise is now set to head for the second leg of the Dirt Triple Crown, the JPN1 Tokyo Derby (2000m) on June 11. He may then get his chance to stamp himself as king of the Japanese dirt three-year-olds against Luxor Cafe and Admire Daytona in the JPN1 Japan Dirt Classic (2000m), a race won last year by Forever Young, on October 8.
“As long as he comes out of this race fine, we will head to the (Tokyo) Derby,” said Ito. “He wasn’t stopping in today’s race and he looked like he still wanted more through the line. I don’t think the distance of the Derby will be an issue but we need to train him to race more calmly. During his training, he is always eager to run, so we have to calm him down with every workout going forward.”
Natural Rise became the first top-level winner on dirt for Kizuna and comes from an American family with dirt prowess. His second dam Dreamwriter is a half-sister to Carpe Diem, who won the G1 Blue Grass Stakes before finishing 10th to American Pharoah in the Kentucky Derby. ∎
