There is a white barn with dark timber beams and a high A-frame roof in Hokkaido, Japan where two special horses live side by side. One has branded on his near-fore shoulder, H. and below it C238 – a Hong Kong Jockey Club identifier; the other has patches of whitening grey hair around her face and throat and wears a blue rug, draped over a back dipped with venerable age.
Hong Kong’s mighty past champion Golden Sixty, almost 11 years old now, nuzzles his muzzle into the bedding of his box. Next door, just a few feet away, the great matriarch Wind In Her Hair stands with her face to the back window, unconcerned by a sparrow hopping across the box floor looking for pickings to eat; at 35 years – a centenarian in human years – she is the oldest living Group 1 winner in Japan and a rare wonder to behold.
Legend is an overused word in all sports these days, but here stand two living examples: Golden Sixty, Hong Kong’s Horse of the Year three times, Hong Kong Classic Series hero, the G1 Hong Kong Mile winner three times, a 10-time Group 1 winner all told, at one time the world’s all-time leading earner, the horse who kept the excitement going for Hong Kong’s racing fans, who gave them something extra special through the oppressive, deflating lockdown years of Covid.
And Wind In Her Hair, a Group 1 winner in Europe way back in 1995 and then a revered broodmare in Japan; the mother of Deep Impact, a great champion on the track and a phenomenal breed-shaping stallion; the dam also of Black Tide, a Group 2 winner and also a progenitor of champions. If Deep Impact was Japan’s answer to Europe’s great stallion of the time, Galileo, then Wind In Her Hair is akin to Galileo’s dam, the incredible blue hen Urban Sea.
Watching over this gelding and this mare at Northern Horse Park are Hana Tsutsumi and groom Masami Tazawa. It is July and the summer rains have kept Wind In Her Hair confined to her box. Tsutsumi explains this is not ideal; at the mare’s age, keeping her daily routine is essential, yet putting her out in the rain is not an option.
“She hasn’t been outside for two days due to rain, so I guess I will be dragged by her when I lead her out today,” Tsutsumi says with a smile.
Tazawa laughs as she confirms, “We all have been dragged by her,” and Tsutsumi grins broadly as she says, “You can soon witness Masami, an 11-year veteran, being dragged by the old lady.”
Eleven years is how long Tazawa has worked at Northern Horse Park, which doubles as a theme park open to the public. Before that, she was two years at college learning equine studies. Tsutsumi has been here for 16 years. She studied in Korea, the land of her father, but did not get hands-on with horses until she completed an equine care course in Japan; a connection from Korea to Northern Farm boss Katsumi Yoshida, who owns horses in Korea, took her to Northern Farm, and then the horse park.
Wind In Her Hair is a marvel to them; their respect and affection for her are evident. There is respect and affection, too, for Golden Sixty, but it manifests differently, he is a different character with a different story. Golden Sixty retains some of the territorial instinct around his own box that he would display during his racing days at Sha Tin.
“He treasures his private space in his box quite a lot, so sometimes we can feel there is a wall between us,” Tazawa says. “But whenever a tourist comes nearby on the route to his paddock, he is very friendly to get along with. And when he is in his paddock, when he sees tourists coming, he will usually reach out his head over the fence towards them.”
But it is the gelding’s level of intelligence that is most striking to those who look after him.
Tsutsumi notes that Golden Sixty “has a lot of curiosity.” But there’s more to it than that alone. “He is very smart,” she says. “He is the smartest horse I’ve ever experienced.”
She recalls one time after working Golden Sixty when she put him in his box for a brief rest and a drink of water.
“I took off his halter, out of habit,” she says, “I waited at the doorway while he drank water and he realised he needed to put on his halter again, so he was waiting for me. He was bending his head and looking at me. When I put his halter back on, he started drinking again.”
In Tsutsumi’s experience, that was not normal, she says: “Usually they will just follow their instinct and drink the water, but he definitely remembered about the halter – maybe he thought I forgot to put it back on – and that was very impressive to me.”
Golden Sixty is keeping active these days preparing for and competing in dressage events. He was second of three in his first competition and then fifth of 16. He’s no dressage standout but he doesn’t need to be, he’s already done the superstar athlete thing, this is about keeping his mind and body active, keeping him healthy and happy, giving him purpose and a good life in retirement.
Tsutsumi and Tazawa say he wasn’t a great student initially, he would keep his head raised, he refused to bend his neck. But his dressage rider, Ryo Kato, was patient and now, Tsutsumi says, “He is doing the flexion naturally.”
Kato is his regular rider these days, but he didn’t use to be. The experienced Hirose-san would ride him when he first arrived at the horse park, popping over poles. But that meant Golden Sixty associated Hirose with jumping, and that’s not going to work for a dressage lesson.
“Hirose was a master in jumping and maybe Golden Sixty felt that, so whenever Hirose rode him, he would try to jump. He would become very excited and not ready for dressage,” Tsutsumi says. “So, Hirose gave his position to Kato who is quite young, but he is very calm and is very good at dressage. Kato started to ride him this April.”
Golden Sixty’s jockey from his racing days, Vincent Ho maintains a strong bond with the greatest horse he has ever ridden, and he is a regular visitor from Hong Kong, checking up on his old friend and riding him, too.
“You know, the owner Mr. Chan, trainer Francis Lui and I, we don’t want them to do a lot of show jumping because it still puts stress on the joints,” Ho tells Idol Horse later. “So we just asked them to basically do dressage and he’s getting better these past few months.”
Golden Sixty will only compete in competitions locally, in Hokkaido, where the season starts in May and ends in October. One per month, or two at most. The rest of his time is spent in the barn or his paddock at Northern Horse Park.
“He is looked after very well there,” Ho says. “They love their horses and they also notice how smart he is. Everything he learns, he does it quicker than I’ve known for other horses. He’s just a very, very smart horse, I think. In terms of IQ, I think he’s much higher than a lot of horses, and he has spark.”
Tazawa leads Golden Sixty out of his box and shows him outside the barn, then takes him down to his paddock where he proceeds to shift through his paces, just briefly, hollering as he goes, as if showing off to his small audience. Then he makes his way to the fence, sticks his head over and watches what goes on around while flicking his ears and flashing his tail. That’s the curiosity and the spark they speak of.
Wind In Her Hair, meanwhile, waits quietly in her box for her chance to get outside. She has seen and done plenty in her long years. She was a highly talented racehorse without being a star: second in the G1 Oaks at Epsom behind Balanchine in 1994, a regular among the beaten in smart contests thereafter before two more peak runs to wind up her career, that well-deserved Group 1 win in the Aral Pokal in Germany and a good third behind Pure Grain in the G1 Yorkshire Oaks.
She was carrying her first foal at the time, Glint In Her Eye, who was no good on the track but produced Wind In Her Hair’s talented grandson, the Group 2 winner Jeremy. Another grandson Gold Blitz – out of her daughter Lady Blond – won the Jpn1 Teio Sho on the dirt at Oi. But it was her own son Deep Impact, Japan’s Triple Crown victor, winner of the G1 Japan Cup, G1 Arima Kinen, G1 Takarazuka Kinen and G1 Tenno Sho Spring, and prepotent 11-time champion sire, who ensured her ‘immortality’.
After her time as a broodmare – bearing and weaning 16 foals – Wind In Her Hair was retired from breeding in 2012 at age 21 and was given the task of being a lead horse for the yearlings at Northern Farm.
“A lead horse usually has to be alone in the paddock, but she really hated being alone, so they had to give her another lead horse to be with her,” Tsutsumi says. “So, that job didn’t suit her and she retired from that as well and came to the park.
“Her morning routine has been pretty much fixed here. She hates her routine to be disrupted, like when she wasn’t sent to the paddock because of the rain, she gets fed up because of that. Because she is old, she feels some aches in her legs, hoofs and joints, but we will still send her out every morning for 30 minutes – this feels like a must among all of our staff. So, for her it is very important to protect her routine, especially in recent years.”
With no sign of rain that morning, Wind In Her Hair prepared for some outside time, while in an arena close by, just out of earshot, high-priced yearlings passed through the sale ring at Japan’s premier thoroughbred auction, the Select Sale.
Those colts and fillies have their racing days ahead of them. Some will become broodmares, one or two of the colts will make it as stallions, perhaps, but if any can match the achievements of the two horses living side by side in the high-roofed barn, they will be special indeed. ∎
