Trainer Yoshito Yahagi wants to give Japanese racing fans one last chance to farewell Forever Young and says the champion’s Breeders’ Cup Classic defeat has done nothing to dent an immense legacy.
The five-year-old will run for the final time in the G1 Tokyo Daishoten at Oi on December 29, depending on how he comes out of quarantine. Owner Susumu Fujita has announced the horse will then retire to stud at Shadai Stallion Station.
Yahagi said the decision to race on came from Fujita’s wish to show the horse to a home crowd one more time, and the whole stable shares it.
“The owner has a strong desire to let Japanese racing fans see Forever Young race one more time. That’s something I agree with, and everyone at the stable feels the same way. He has already earned so much money, so this isn’t about prize money. If we are going to run him again to let the Japanese fans see him one last time, the Tokyo Daishoten is the race,” Yahagi told reporters at Tokyo Racecourse.
“His defeat (in the Breeders’ Cup Classic) does nothing to diminish everything he has achieved throughout his career. I just hope we can give the Japanese fans one final opportunity to see him race.”
Forever Young finished fifth behind Sovereignty at Keeneland on October 31 as he tried to join Tiznow as the only horse to win the Classic in consecutive years. Yahagi believes the defeat came down mainly to the mental side rather than the physical. In September the horse won the G1 Jockey Club Gold Cup on opening day at the new Belmont Park, and Yahagi thinks back-to-back starts overseas may have put too much stress on him.
The trainer took responsibility for that call. He said a preparation in Japan might have been the better approach. That was the path he used before Forever Young’s third in the 2024 Classic and before his historic win at Del Mar 12 months later.
Retirement was far from settled when Yahagi spoke to Idol Horse’s David Morgan at Keeneland in the days before the Classic, in a story you can read here.
“Two weeks ago, the owner Mr. Fujita and I had a lot of drinks together and discussed his future plans,” Yahagi said that morning. “We drank a lot, and discussed for a long, long time. And the conclusion of our discussion was, we were unable to reach any conclusion. So, I cannot rule out any possibilities.”
Yahagi also joked that if Forever Young were named Horse of the Year in both the United States and Japan, he would be “happy to conclude my training career immediately.”
Connections seriously considered a bid for a third straight Saudi Cup but rejected it over security concerns in the region. Yahagi described those concerns as worse than the ones hanging over Meydan in March, when conflict in the Gulf led some connections to pull out of the Dubai World Cup. Forever Young ran second to Magnitude that night.
Yahagi also opposed a run in the G1 Arima Kinen because he felt the race might be too demanding for the horse.
“Mr. Yahagi has explained everything for me, I just hoped the Japanese fans can have a chance to see him run for one final time,” Fujita told Nikkan Sports.
Breeders overseas made offers for the son of Real Steel. Fujita, the CyberAgent founder, chose to keep him at the farm that stood his sire, his grandsire Deep Impact and his great-grandsire Sunday Silence.
“We have received multiple stud deals from overseas, but we finally decided to keep him at Shadai,” Fujita said.
NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, carried the retirement news. That is a rare honour: NHK usually reports only major Group 1 results and its own NHK Mile Cup. Since 2020, the only other horses whose retirements it has covered are Almond Eye, Oju Chosan, Sodashi and Equinox.
In 17 starts Forever Young has won 12 races, and until Keeneland he had never finished worse than third. Ryusei Sakai has ridden him every time.
He came within two noses of giving Japan its first Kentucky Derby in a three-way photo in 2024. Later that year he won the Tokyo Daishoten, the race that will now close his career.
His defining afternoon came in Riyadh in February 2025, when he ran down Hong Kong’s Romantic Warrior by a neck in the Saudi Cup, a duel many still rank as the race of the century.
“Forever Young is much the best horse I have had in my career as a trainer,” Yahagi said that night.
Nine months later Forever Young beat Sierra Leone at Del Mar and became the first Japanese-trained winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic. That avenged his Kentucky Derby and Classic defeats from the year before, and he went on to be named Japan’s Horse of the Year and America’s champion older dirt male.
“I have been traveling horses for 15 years and in the first five years I experienced a lot of failures, but I think those failures on failures led to the successes and to this moment,” Yahagi told Idol Horse after the race.
He returned to Riyadh this February and beat Nysos by a length to become the first two-time winner of the Saudi Cup. His earnings now exceed US$32 million. That makes him the richest horse in Japanese history and second only to Romantic Warrior on the all-time list.
Forever Young was foaled on February 24, 2021, the same day Cygames released Umamusume: Pretty Derby. Cygames is a subsidiary of Fujita’s CyberAgent. On his fifth birthday this year the Breeders’ Cup winner joined the game as a character, complete with a hat in honour of his famously behatted trainer. That has made him a star to a generation of gamers and anime fans who had never set foot on a racecourse, a crossover Fujita had long promised.
The Yahagi stable confirmed the farewell in a statement on X.
“His condition remains our top priority, but the entire Team Forever Young has unanimously agreed that we want to give Japanese fans one final chance to see him race. With that in mind, we have decided that his final race will be the Tokyo Daishoten, and we would like to announce that decision.” ∎
