João Moreira touched down from France this week with Strauss’s run behind him and one thing on his mind: riding a horse he has come to regard with something close to reverence.
“He really deserves to win an international race overseas,” Moreira says of Satono Reve, the Japanese sprinter he reunites with on the Knavesmire in either Friday’s Coolmore City Of Troy Nunthorpe Stakes or the following day’s City of York. “He has proven himself in Japan and ran great races against very tough opposition in Hong Kong and the UK, and I hope he can show everybody how good he is.”
Trainer Noriyuki Hori has never once ducked a Group 1 assignment with Satono Reve and has spent the past two years pointing him at the very best sprinters on the planet – in Japan, in Hong Kong, and now on an extended European campaign that has taken in Royal Ascot, Newmarket and, this week, York. What he hasn’t done yet is win one of them away from home.
Satono Reve tips the scales at just under 1,200 pounds – not enormous by sprinting standards, but muscular – and it is the sheer physicality of him that strikes Moreira.
“A monster,” he says. “He’s a big horse but very kind. Not very difficult to ride, but he’s got some weakness – sometimes he might not jump as fast as he needs to for sprint races. Some of those races he’s run in Hong Kong, that proves it. But I have managed to get him to jump well a couple of times – once in Japan and once in England. And both of those times he flew out of the gate.”
The catch, Moreira explains, is that “sometimes he can mistime it” – the difference, in a five- or six-furlong dash, between winning and finishing agonisingly close.
That description sums up Satono Reve’s whole résumé: brilliant, brave, and just occasionally undone by the smallest margins. Twice he has gone to Royal Ascot for the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes and been run down late – second to Lazzat last year with Moreira in the saddle, second to Almeraq this year under Ryan Moore. Four times he has taken on Hong Kong’s all-conquering Ka Ying Rising, finishing runner-up in the G1 Chairman’s Sprint Prize on each occasion Moreira partnered him. He stayed on in England after Ascot to run third in the G1 July Cup at Newmarket. Overall Satono Reve’s record stands at nine wins from 20 starts, and a top-two finish in 14 of them. He has never once failed to turn up for the assignment.
Moreira is closer to the end of his career than the beginning these days, riding regularly in his native Brazil and picking his international assignments more judiciously than the version of himself who once chased records and battled with arch-rival Zac Purton for much of the year twice per week on the two-track Hong Kong circuit. He has never won a Group 1 in England.
Asked for his biggest regret from his rides in Britain, he doesn’t hesitate: Medicean Man, the 2015 G1 King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot, the same card on which his old ally Able Friend flopped in the G1 Queen Anne Stakes. “A horse with basically no form. An outsider,” Moreira says of the 50-1 shot. “But he nearly stole it.”
The other regret comes courtesy of a horse he wasn’t even able to ride. Five days later at the same meeting, Brazen Beau – the horse Moreira had steered to a breakthrough Australian win – went to post at Royal Ascot with Craig Williams in the saddle instead, and was narrowly beaten. The Hong Kong Jockey Club had declined to release Moreira to make the trip. “I wish I had been on him,” he says. He still calls Brazen Beau “the nicest sprinter I have ever ridden.”
Moreira hasn’t ridden at York but is excited for the opportunity, “Of course I watch every year,” he says. “I approach the situation as it presents, and I always go with plan A, B – just trying to get the best out of the horse. If it’s meant to be, well. If it’s not, I’m still okay. I’m happy. I’m just happy to be getting another chance on this horse and to ride at such a prestigious meeting, because who knows – next year I might not get another one. But as I’m getting one today, I’ll make every chance count. I’m at a different time of my life, and I’m happy anyway.”
Satono Reve has crossed hemispheres and taken on the best sprinters in three racing jurisdictions without ever ducking a fight. Moreira wants a Group 1 in England. But ask him about the horse, and it’s obvious who he wants it for more.
“He really deserves it.” ∎
