Forever Young’s legend swelled in Riyadh Saturday night with an emphatic and historic second win in the G1 Saudi Cup, but his legacy will be felt beyond the red dirt and white rails of the King Abdulaziz race track, or Del Mar, or Oi, or Funabashi for that matter.
Japan’s greatest dirt track runner, the best in the world in that sphere right now, is about to be immortalised in the burgeoning gaming world, as a character in Umamusume: Pretty Derby, the video game, anime and manga franchise that his big-spending owner Susumu Fujita’s Cygames has developed and is taking to the world.
“Forever Young will be in Umamusume soon, I can’t say the exact details, but it’s a huge thing for me personally that Forever Young can contribute to Umamusume,” Fujita told Idol Horse in the hectic minutes after he had spoken to a packed press conference and was being hurried away to catch a late-night flight home.
The expectation among Umamusume’s ardent fans is that Forever Young will be added to the game’s character line-up on his own birthday on February 24 – five years to the day since the Umamusume game launched – transforming the hero horse into one of the game’s iconic horse girls alongside past greats like the people’s champion, Oguri Cap and the fans’ darling, Almond Eye.
Immediately after Forever Young’s win on American soil in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic last November, Umamusume’s official social media accounts posted a tantalising image, a simple silhouette of a horse girl, with the numbers 2026.02.24.
The numbers that mattered in Riyadh were US$10 million, 1:51.03, and one: the prize money banked, the time it took Forever Young to win the 1800m feature, and the distance by which he defeated the American runner-up Nysos.
“He was just born in the wrong year,” said Nysos’s trainer Bob Baffert. “The horse showed up but so did Forever Young. We’re disappointed we got beat but we got beat by a really good horse; Forever Young is just a great horse.”
Not long after Baffert left the scene, Ryusei Sakai, Forever Young’s jockey, departed the track, black-suited, walking into the quiet of the darkened car park with his pencil straight arm raised aloft and waving – as if he was a conquering general saluting the grateful masses on victory parade – while a handful of vocal female fans whooped and cheered echoing goodbyes.
Sakai had opted to take a spot on the rail, one behind the leader, from his starting point in gate five. Forever Young rolled through the race without too much fuss as the kickback came his way, and any fears he might be stuck in a pocket disappeared when Adel Alfouraidi on the pace-setter Banishing drifted off the fence at the top of the stretch, handing him a clear passage to the line.
Nysos challenged on the outer, but the distance appeared to be a shade too far for the G1 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner, and the opponent too strong.
“When he jumped out, another horse tried to go around me, which I expected, so I tried to be calm and whenever I got space, he progressed and got his position,” Sakai said.
“I respected Nysos before the race and he challenged me and we had a great race, so I enjoyed that.”
Baffert had praise for the victors: “That jockey that rides him, he rides him with so much confidence and he just got through there,” he said, “King Kong got beat!
“That’s the first time Nysos has ever been really tested and it took a horse like Forever Young. It’s the first time we’ve travelled him (overseas), and to run like that: it’s hard to bring a horse of that calibre here, that’s the best one I’ve brought here.”
The winning trainer Yoshito Yahagi had said before the race that his charge was “over 90 percent” in condition. The bay stepped out under the floodlights looking strong, his coat healthy, his demeanour calm and focused, and after he had taken the spoils again, Yahagi reaffirmed, “He’s not 100 per cent in his condition yet, he still has space to improve.”
Fujita said the Dubai World Cup is the plan now, the aim being to banish the disappointment of last year’s third in the big race at Meydan, but beyond that, the schedule is not set. Yet the owner revealed that the five-year-old might not retire to stud at this year’s end, with a third Saudi Cup win the new target.
There had been talk in the past about Forever Young testing his prowess on turf, with a grand farewell in the G1 Arima Kinen in December even mooted. But that exciting yet unlikely pipedream is now barely that, it seems.
“The Dubai World Cup is our main target, at the moment, but after that we have not made any plans yet,” Fujita said. “I changed my mind a little bit now and I would like to win the Saudi Cup again next year,” adding that it’s only a two-month career extension.
He added, too, that winning a race in the Japan Racing Association (JRA) is one priority this year, but if the Arima Kinen is off the board, which race that might be is not certain and was not stated, and past hints that Forever Young might race in Europe seemed to be squashed.
“I believe we’d like to try turf racing,” Yahagi added, “but my feeling (with Forever Young) is a little bit negative about racing in Europe; I don’t like to decide a horse’s ability, a horse always has a future so I don’t want to cut out any possibility, and I would still like to see how he might run on the turf.”
The day had started well for Japan, albeit away from Riyadh, with the Yasutoshi Ikee-trained Deep Monster – a son of the great Deep Impact – winning the G2 Amir Trophy in another Gulf state, Qatar, under Tom Marquand. It was the first Japanese success in that race.
“My father trained Deep Impact and it was my family’s dream to win a big race overseas with a son of Deep Impact, so that was my dream and the dream came true,” Ikee said post-race in Doha.
“Tom rode him perfectly, he rode him like I thought he would, so I give him credit for that.”
The win – stalking one back on the fence – was an important one for the English rider who gained reward for the three winters he has raced in Japan, putting in the hard work, making contacts, and earning both wins and respect.
But the buoyant mood was soon tempered in Saudi. The Japanese contingent was disappointed time after time as their contenders failed to challenge across the lucrative Riyadh card, until Forever Young came along in the final race and made up for it all.
Satono Voyage set the pulses racing off the home turn under Keita Tosaki in the G3 Saudi Derby, but found the mile too far and faded to third behind the local rising star Al Haram; US sprinter Imagination took the G2 Riyadh Dirt Sprint and another American, Reef Runner, won the G2 1351 Turf Sprint, with the Japanese nowhere near.
Flavien Prat drove Imagination – eye-catching in the paddock pre-race – to success and he even had a small hand to play in Irad Ortiz’s victory on the powerful Reef Runner. The eagle-eyed might have spotted ‘F. Prat’ in small black writing on the back of Ortiz’s white riding pants, close to the waste-band, as he returned to scale.
“The magic pants!” Ortiz laughed as he explained to Idol Horse, “I have sponsorship on my pants but when they text me to tell me I can’t wear them here, I was already on the plane.
“I’ve got a good relationship with Flavien, he always has a big bag of stuff – I saw him last week at Tampa (Bay Downs), he had a big bag then – so I said, ‘Flavien, did you bring some regular pants?’ He said, ‘yes, I have some’, I said, ‘I’m probably going to need some.’ So, he gave me these to wear.
“He said if I win, I have to give him five percent!” he added with more laughter.
The G2 Red Sea Turf Handicap was another poor result for the Japanese as Ireland’s Sons And Lovers led a European clean-sweep of the placings under Dylan Browne McMonagle.
Then in the first of the two Group 1 races, the Neom Turf Cup, Yahagi’s Shin Emperor was not in the form that had won him the race so impressively last year, while the well-regarded Alohi Alii was never in contention after being unsettled in the starting stalls.
Instead, it was the Karl Burke-trained Royal Champion who surged clear of his rivals under Oisin Murphy in brilliant style: like Deep Monster in Qatar, another eight-year-old in the form of his life.
“He’s a little bit soft,” Burke told Idol Horse. “In the stables he can be a little bit aggressive and a bit soft at the races, he’s not a worrier, but I’ve seen him trembling at the start. He’s a strong horse at home, but he’s a girl’s ride.
“If anything has improved him, I’d say it’s where we train and the attention the girls give him.”
Royal Champion arrived at Burke’s rural North Yorkshire stables in late 2024 in need of reinvention after a failed relocation to Australia, having started his career in Newmarket with Roger Varian. It was the gelding’s late owner, Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum, who believed a move to the edge of Middleham’s high moor would be best.
“It’s fantastic to do it on this stage, with the money and the way they’re promoting racing in the Middle East area,” Burke added. “You’ve got to be competing here if you want to be doing it at the top level.”
Forever Young is at the very top of the top with his two Saudi Cups and his Breeders’ Cup Classic among an impressive collection of victories, and as Cygames seeks to expand Umamusume’s reach since its English-language game launch last summer, the brilliant champion’s worldwide fame is the best marketing tool Fujita could have wished for. ∎
