Kentucky To Cult Hero: The Legend Of Grass Wonder

THERE WAS A MEME going around the Umamusume Pretty Derby social media sphere in the days leading up to Grass Wonder’s passing at age 30 on August 8: a picture of the chestnut in a snow-covered paddock carrying ample weight around his girth. The comments cheekily poked fun at the aged champion’s famed appetite and his propensity to put on weight all too easily, a trait incorporated into his Umamusume reincarnation.

Then he died and the tone among Umamusume fans shifted swiftly to remorse for the “fatty” and “chubby” comments, and embraced reverence for a horse most of them never saw race and only came to know because of his fantastical, anthropomorphic representation in a cult video game and anime series.

Umamusume is Cygames’ lucrative video game, anime, manga, music and live show franchise that takes Japan’s hero race horses and retells their stories through rebirth as late-teen ‘horse girls.’

Right at that confluence where real-world race horses and cyber-world horse girls meet there is a colourful mix of myth merging with fact – a blurring of where horse girl ends and real horse starts – and a whole lot of emotionally-committed fandom that connects the alternative ‘Pretty Derby’ universe with actual champions of Japanese horse racing.  

Grass Wonder, a horse that raced more than a quarter of a century ago, holds a special place in that dimension, as not only the last of Japan’s turn-of-the-century ‘Golden Generation’ to depart mortality but also the first horse portrayed in immortal Umamusume form to have passed away since the game went global with its long-awaited English language game release on the Steam platform in June this year.

Umamusume fans even held a cyber funeral for the horse whose girl character is pitched as having a firm determination to win, friendly, American-born but ‘Japanese at heart’; a well-liked bundle of ‘weebness’ as the forums peg the behaviour of non-Japanese individuals embracing Japanese culture.    

Two absolute realities popping out of the myth here are that Grass Wonder the race horse was a real life sports star and he was indeed born in the USA, foaled at Darby Dan Farm in Kentucky on February 18, 1995, a son of the Airdrie Stud stallion Silver Hawk out of the Danzig mare Ameriflora. He was bred by Phillips Racing Partnership and John Phillips.

Phillips is the owner of Darby Dan Farm, located just outside of Lexington. He is not familiar with Umamusume, so knows nothing of Grass Wonder’s alternative horse girl incarnation which has a familiar white star on the bangs of her long ‘tawny’ hair. But Phillips does have fond memories of Grass Wonder, the horse his farm bred. 

Phillips told Idol Horse by phone from Kentucky that the young Grass Wonder “was an attractive horse,” adding that “the combination of Silver Hawk over that family, it’s an historic family – he’s out of Ameriflora, which is Danzig – that has served us very very well over the years.”

Grass Wonder’s first 19 months of life were spent munching the Kentucky bluegrass there at Darby Dan. Then came his first big day out, to Keeneland for its world famous September Yearling Sale, an auction ring through which many a champion has passed. 

If not for his dam having never had her athletic ability tested, Phillips said,  “We might have kept the colt ourselves,” but with that uncertainty, the “business decision” to sell him in Keeneland’s marketplace was taken. 

“The issue that I had was that Ameriflora was unraced, she had an offset knee and we didn’t think she’d be successful on the race track, so although the pedigree was excellent, we just didn’t know.”

At that 1996 Keeneland sale the likes of Katsumi Yoshida of Northern Farm, Kazuo Nishiura, Osamu Yasuda and Nobuo Tsunoda were among the Japanese buyers. It was Tsunoda who signed for Hip 192, Grass Wonder: the cost was US$250,000.

“I remember selling him,” Phillips said. “The first two books at Keeneland are always tremendously exciting and very international, as Grass Wonder attested. That sale is the most energetic sale and also one of the hardest to work because there are so many horses presented over so many days. 

“It’s a sale that has a different feel to it as it goes along: the first couple of books are very international, high-brow, expensive horses; when you get to books four and five it becomes a workmanlike sale, with mostly American buyers and what I would call secondary international buyers from places like South America and Turkey, and that flavour has changed because jurisdictions like Japan have moved up to the elite level without any doubt. 

“It’s a sale that has phases to it,” he continued. “We joke about it a little bit: in the first day and the first week you’re going to hear every language of every prominent racing country, but by day 10 what you have is belt buckles and cowboy hats, so it has its evolution, and that’s what’s exciting about it because it just spans the breadth of the industry.” 

After selling in book one, Grass Wonder was exported to Miho training centre outside Tokyo where he was trained by Mitsuhiro Ogata for the Hanzawa family. One year and seven days on from his sale at Keeneland, the powerful colt stepped out at Nakayama for a dominant newcomer win, scoring by three lengths and six lengths over the next two home. It was a brilliant debut full of exciting potential.

Phillips recalled how at that time Japanese horses had not yet had the international success nor acquired the profile they have now, so there was some uncertainty about how the colt’s career might shape. 

“When I heard he was going to Japan – I don’t believe this now – I thought, oh, no, because they were not as prominent then as they certainly are now,” Phillips said. “The Japanese programme has been very methodical, very successful and they are really astute participants in the sport, but at the time I was fearful that he might drop off the map. 

“But he was impressive (winning those two-year-old races), I got feedback very quickly from Japan that he was a star: it helped move the pedigree up to a large degree. 

“So he didn’t exactly drop off the map, he actually highlighted the map and I was very excited about that.” 

Grass Wonder was so imperious in his early races that by the time he completed a perfect four-timer in Japan’s chief juvenile contest that December –  he won the race that would become the Asahi Hai Futurity in record time – he was already being hailed as the second coming of the undefeated 1970s champion Maruzensky, who himself was sold at Keeneland, in utero, when his dam Shill walked the sale ring in 1973.

As with Maruzensky, the brilliant Grass Wonder was barred from the Tokyo Yushun, the Japanese Derby, due to being bred overseas. But injury ruled him out anyway: the powerful chestnut missed 10 months, returned in the autumn with two losses, but raised his game with a thrilling bounce back to win Japan’s great end of year Grand Prix, the Arima Kinen, defeating Air Groove, Seiun Sky and Stay Gold. He went on to win the summer Grand Prix, the Takarazuka Kinen, the following year and added a second Arima Kinen in December. 

That ‘Golden Generation’ included another Kentucky-bred hero El Condor Pasa, who would win in France and go so close to winning the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe; there was Seiun Sky as well, King Halo, another early overseas winner Agnes World, and the 1998 Derby winner Special Week. 

Grass Wonder defeated Special Week in the 1999 Takarazuka Kinen, but the rematch between the pair in the Arima Kinen that December was an epic clash still talked about today: it brought the famous “Four centimetres” result as the pair flashed past the winning post with the star three-year-old T M Opera O a close third.

Grass Wonder’s rider Hitoshi Matoba has since spoken about the moments after the race: Special Week’s jockey, the great Yutaka Take, asked repeatedly if he had won; Matoba was agitated by the questioning, believing Take had beaten him. But his feelings turned to elation when Grass Wonder’s win was confirmed.

That was Grass Wonder’s last victory, his ninth from 15 starts. He retired at the end of the following year to Shadai Stallion Station, moving to Breeders’ Stallion Station in 2015 at age 20. He sired the Japan Cup winner Screen Hero whose son Maurice proved to be a brilliant champion, too.

He spent his later years at Big Red Farm, and, legend has it, he had quite the appetite for devouring dandelions.

That appetite portrayed in his Umamusume character in turn raised awareness for the needs of retired racehorses and he himself benefited from a programme set up to provide feed for old thoroughbreds post-career through the fresh hay bank, namabokusobank.jp.

The portal enables anyone to purchase 5kg boxes of fresh hay to be sent to horses. Grass Wonder’s fans, including those who connected via Umamusume, donated in total 3,985kg of hay to Grass Wonder since he retired from stallion duties.

His profile at Namabokusobank features birthday messages and tributes since his passing. 

“Grass is strongest,” his fans would call out from trackside, back in those days of juvenile supremacy and grand prix brilliance, long before Umamusume and its gamer culture accoutrements came along, absorbed Grass Wonder’s character and extended his fame to a new generation, a whole different audience.

It’s said that his neighbour at stud, the enigmatic grey Gold Ship, would pause as if to salute Grass Wonder as he passed by the old champion’s box. Whether myth or reality, the fact is that the horse that went through the Keeneland ring all those years ago has left his mark far beyond the racetrack.  

“Our philosophy is they’re all champions until they prove otherwise,” Phillips said.

Grass Wonder proved he was. ∎