Liberty Island: Confident And Brilliant, A Heroine Adored

FANS LAID FLOWERS and offerings at the Liberty Island statue at Kyoto Racecourse last weekend, some dressed in the black, red and yellow Sunday Racing silks the brilliant mare had carried throughout her stunning career that ended so suddenly with her death in Hong Kong one week prior. 

Those scenes of fans paying tribute brought to mind the words of her trainer Mitsumasa Nakauchida speaking after the filly had won the 2023 Shuka Sho to clinch the Triple Tiara, saying that Liberty Island now belonged to the fans as well: he mentioned then the responsibility he felt, knowing how important she was to so many people.

That connection between horse and fans was seen strikingly at the Yushun Himba four months before the Shuka Sho when her jockey Yuga Kawada made the unusual pre-race appeal to the fans to keep the crowd noise level down in the build-up, to help Liberty Island remain calm. The masses acquiesced.

“I do feel that connection even more now, actually,” Nakauchida tells Idol Horse. “Looking back, I was always more focused on looking at her as an individual and how she is every day, so I didn’t have a chance, or the time, to think a lot about other things, I was more focused on the horse during that time throughout her career.”

Nakauchida’s memories of Liberty Island are not only of a brilliant Triple Tiara heroine, but also a confident filly with a personality that was all her own.

That independent character was evident when she first arrived at his Ritto stable from Northern Farm’s pre-training already carrying the seed of a reputation that was enough to set the Nakauchida stable abuzz. A sense that perhaps this speedy daughter of a Group 1-winning mare might be the real thing.

“She showed speed and talent from an early stage, so everyone involved had high expectations of her,” Nakauchida says. “As a two-year-old she was kind of temperamental, she wasn’t an easy horse to deal with, but that was just her young personality and I didn’t see it as a bad thing at all, she was just being herself. She was lively and she looked at everything.

“But when she ran, she was all focus, she wanted to go faster, more forward than we wanted and we had to hold her.”

Nakauchida is speaking 10 days after the filly that took him and his team on a journey to the sport’s classic-winning pinnacle was euthanised in Hong Kong as the result of a race injury when contesting the G1 QEII Cup at Sha Tin. He says he does not know yet how to adequately express his feelings about that moment and its consequences: not that he does not want to talk about those feelings, but that he is still processing the emotions around losing Liberty Island and does not yet have the words.

“It is a very hard time for everyone, not just for the stable, there are so many people involved in Liberty Island,” he says. “I got so many heartwarming messages and so many people have said nice words to me, so I was helped in so many ways.”

Helped, too, by the knowledge that the mare has her place in history as one of only seven fillies to have completed Japan’s fillies’ triple crown of the G1 Oka Sho, G1 Yushun Himba, and G1 Shuka Sho. She also won Japan’s top two-year-old race for her sex, the G1 Hanshin Juvenile Fillies, and was second to the world’s top-rated horse at the time, the great Equinox racing at the peak of his powers, in the G1 Japan Cup.

Liberty Island’s fame spread beyond Japan’s shores as she took her precocious talent and bloomed through a captivating classic campaign. Her career was one of excellence, of joyous highs and a couple of heart-wrenching lows, and it started in sensational style.

It was a warm day at Niigata racecourse on July 30, 2022 when the Sunday Racing-owned Duramente filly out of Yankee Rose raced for the first time. It was a 1600m contest for newcomers and Liberty Island was the 2.1 favourite under Yuga Kawada who would ride her in all 11 races through the next two years and nine months.

“Yuga was so attached to her from day one and he loved her and cared about her,” Nakauchida says. “In the stable she was so genuine to him as well. He rode so many big winners in his career, but he hadn’t ridden a horse from first time out in all their races, I think this is the only (top) horse he has ridden in all their career, so Liberty Island is really a very special horse for him as well.”

What happened next at Niigata that day was stunning.

“It was summertime and it was fast ground, and Niigata is flat, so with her ability, the way she did it was unbelievable, but I can understand it because of all those things,” the trainer says.

The first-up juvenile showed greenness as she was switched out for her effort in the straight, but when Kawada asked her to quicken, she rifled past her rivals and extended for a three-length win, passing the post with a little white pompom tied into her mane bouncing between her ears. She clocked 31.4 seconds for the final 600m, the equal-fastest final 600m in Japan Racing Association (JRA) history at any distance across all ages.

The pompoms would become a signature feature, most noticeably through her Triple Tiara run: pink, famously, for the Oka Sho in the spring cherry blossom season, red pompoms for the summer Yushun Himba, and yellow and orange for the autumn Shuka Sho. They were tied in by her devoted groom, Keisuke Matsuzaki, whose wife came up with the idea.

After the ‘wow’ of her debut, Liberty Island was the 1.4 favourite for her next outing in Group 3, but suffered a shock defeat by a neck to Ravel, a filly she would prove to be eminently superior to. She bounced back to win the G1 Hanshin Juvenile Fillies by a toying two and a half lengths, a win so dominant it prompted speculation that perhaps Sunday Racing’s emerging star might take the Derby route as a three-year-old.

That did not happen, of course. The bay with the white star and a hint of thin, broken stripe on her face, stepped out at Hanshin as the 1.6 favourite for the first fillies’ classic, the Oka Sho. She had her supporters sweating when travelling third-last, about eight lengths down and switched wide into the final straight. Kawada asked her to quicken and the response was sharp and powerful, yet even with 200m to go it looked to be a task too great. This was Liberty Island, though: she maintained her storming stride and led close home.

On to the Yushun Himba, the Oaks, and a different kind of breathtaking. This time she was the 1.4 favourite on a bright Tokyo afternoon: she was simply brilliant, ranging up on the outside at the top of the straight, cruising under a motionless Kawada until a shake of the reins gave cue for a burst of acceleration that saw Liberty Island stretch out to a six-length win.

“I didn’t think she would do it the way she did, she left the field,” Nakauchida says. “The way she ran in the Oka Sho, I thought I had a good chance to win the Oaks, but not the way she did, she just left them behind.”

After her classic victories in April and May, Liberty Island summered at Northern Farm’s Shigaraki farm where she put on 40 to 50 kilograms in bodyweight, and emerged a stronger filly for her attempt at sealing the Triple Tiara in the 2000m Shuka Sho on October 15.

“That was a very special day,” Nakauchida recalls. “Because she had three or four months off coming to that race she was kind of laid back and relaxed and she wasn’t switched on actually, so she didn’t feel any pressure that day at all.”

Liberty Island rolled powerfully towards the lead on the Kyoto home turn. Once she was in the straight, Kawada gave her the signal to quicken and away she went, drawing clear before idling a little, easing down to seal a one-length triumph and immortality.

“All the crowd was excited about the way she did it and everyone expected that performance as well,” Nakauchida says.

“I would say she was versatile. That’s the word I would use to describe her, because she won over a mile and also at a mile and a half. Not many horses can do that. And she did it brilliantly. We saw in the Oka Sho and the Yushun Himba, she ran two totally different race styles.”

As with her Oka Sho win, Nakauchida felt Liberty Island was only at about 80 per cent of her optimum in the Shuka Sho. What came next would require 100 per cent: in fact, it needed the performance of her life if she was to trouble the world’s best, the great Equinox in the November 2023 Japan Cup.

Liberty Island, the three-year-old filly, was unable to top the mighty four-year-old colt Equinox, but she did indeed run the race of her life, chasing gamely in second. Take out the champion and she defeated a top-class field by a length.

“That was a huge performance by her,” Nakauchida says. “I know she was beaten but she was beaten by the best horse in the world. That performance was incredible, really.”

Her stellar campaign elevated hopes that Liberty Island might do it all again, and more, as a four-year-old. Sadly, circumstances conspired against.

After a deep-closing run to third in the G1 Dubai Sheema Classic at Meydan, Liberty Island was struck by what was termed a ‘minor’ suspensory injury. But that wiped out the rest of a spring campaign and her recovery stretched through the summer into autumn.

When she returned, at the end of October 2024, it was at the highest level possible, in the G1 Tenno Sho Autumn over 2000m at Tokyo, a race stacked with elite talent. Liberty Island ‘blew up’ and faded out, short of race readiness.

But that put her spot on for a trip to Hong Kong in December and a match with the brilliant champion Romantic Warrior on his home patch. Liberty Island was more like her old self, rattling down the straight in pursuit, bearing down for second place faster than any other horse, with a closing 400m timed at 22.46s. The 2023 Tokyo Yushun winner Tastiera was third.

Just like one year before, there was optimism going into the new year and connections set her towards another tilt at a big Dubai race in early April 2025, this time the G1 Dubai Turf at 1800m. She looked relaxed and fluid in her trackwork at Meydan but when the race came around, she was found lacking in race sharpness and placed eighth.

The belief was she would benefit from that run, just as she had previously. A fairly quick turnaround was planned, a return to Hong Kong for the QEII Cup. She looked well at Sha Tin, but as the field accelerated into the home straight and Tastiera went on to victory, Liberty Island suffered serious ligament damage to her near fore leg and was euthanised.

“These things happen in life for reasons, and that’s the way I look at it,” Nakauchida says. “I have to learn from this experience and then put everything together in the future, so we have to keep going and do the best for other horses.

“It isn’t an easy time for everyone and the horses have really helped us,” he adds. “It’s the funny thing about horse racing and the relationships between horses and human beings: horses always lift you up and put you back on the road.” ∎