As Christophe Lemaire works towards the year’s end with a seventh JRA (Japan Racing Association) champion jockey title already in the bag, he does so with an acute appreciation for the highs and lows of his craft and an innate sense of the importance of fellowship among his weighing room comrades and rivals during difficult times.
“That was a year of ups and downs,” Lemaire tells Idol Horse. “I’m quite happy with my season, being the leading jockey for the seventh time in 10 seasons in Japan, so yes, I’m quite happy with that aspect.”
The stats tell us that even with a couple of weeks still to go Lemaire has 172 JRA wins on the board, which is 33 more than his nearest rival, Yuga Kawada, and his highest tally since 2021. They also show that he notched 11 domestic Group race wins, three Group 1s among them.
And he’s not finished yet. Urban Chic, his G1 Kikuka Sho hero, is seen as the biggest threat to champion older horse Do Deuce in Japan’s great end-of-year feature, Sunday’s G1 Arima Kinen.
But there are things that numbers and names in record books don’t tell. Lemaire’s year was only three months in when he had a crushing fall in the G1 Dubai Turf that gave him a punctured lung and a broken collarbone, among other injuries, and sidelined him for a month or more.
Then came the tragic deaths of Kota Fujioka in April and Taiga Tsunoda in August that hit Japan’s jockey cohort particularly hard this year; also, the raft of suspensions imposed on several jockeys for misuse of communication devices during travel to and from the races and during the compulsory weekend ‘jockey lockdown’ period.
Lemaire is not an officially-designated spokesperson and does not feel that it is appropriate to speak to the broader issue of smartphone usage and the penalties that have been handed down to jockeys for breaking JRA rules. That, he believes, is something for the JRA and the jockeys’ association to work out.
But in the specific case of senior rider Yasunari Iwata, the man most famous internationally as the rider of the great sprinter Lord Kanaloa, Lemaire believes it was appropriate to make a statement. Iwata received a one-month ban for listening to music on YouTube during his journey to jockey lockdown at the racecourse, with the JRA taking the view that he had broken the rules, in part because YouTube’s comments section means it can be used for communication.
At Kyoto last Sunday Lemaire, Ryusei Sakai and Iwata’s son Mirai Iwata, wore Iwata’s breeches and when the champion won race eight on the Yasutoshi Ikee-trained Culminale, he gave a particular fist-pump, a nod to Iwata’s signature celebration.
“Last weekend I wanted to give my support to Yasunari Iwata who was suspended for one month,” he says. “In my opinion, this ban is a bit excessive for what he has done and that’s why I wore his jockey trousers and I celebrated the winner like he used to do. That was in support of a colleague who cannot ride for a month for listening to music.
“I support the jockey because I find the ban to be a bit excessive for what he did: he didn’t touch the integrity of horse racing.”
Lemaire’s appreciation of the fraternal bond between riders – even though they are tough competitors when race time comes around – is rooted in the shared knowledge that what they do each time they climb onto a horse is fraught with mortal danger and can present mental as well as physical challenges.
That was hammered home with the deaths of Tsunoda and Fujioka. Fujioka was the first jockey to die as a result of a JRA race fall for 20 years.
“When you are close to your fellow jockeys, any time you lose one of them you feel really down for a couple of weeks and it’s hard to accept, but this is part of the sport and we know the risks. Of course, everybody tries to reduce that risk but at the same time it’s something you have to live with,” Lemaire says.
“You have to be aware of the risk but you cannot think about it. You know that risk, but as soon as you start thinking about the risk too much then it’s better to stop and go and do something else. You cannot perform if you are always thinking about the risks. Just being scared of riding, and being scared of the accident, you cannot perform if you dwell on this. It can be tough for two or three weeks but then you put up a kind of a wall and just focus your mind on your horse, your race, and being first to the winning post. You keep going like this as far as you can.
“There’s nothing much you can do when a riding accident happens, but you realise how lucky you are when you go back home after a weekend, when you arrive home safe and in good shape, and you had a few winners: you try to enjoy the many positive aspects of your job that little bit more.”
Urban Chic has certainly been a big positive this year for Lemaire. He has ridden the Silk Racing-owned colt in both his starts this autumn for wins in the G2 St Lite Kinen, and last time in the Japanese St Leger, the G1 Kikuka Sho, at Kyoto.
Those wins came after the colt had a summer break following a disappointing 11th-place in the Derby, the G1 Tokyo Yushun, which in turn followed a promising fourth in the first colt’s classic, the G1 Satsuki Sho.
“Maybe early in the season, in the spring, Urban Chic was not mature yet, but since autumn he has really stepped up in condition and maturity,” he says. “The two races I won on him, I was very pleased with his action and with his footwork, and also with his attitude just before the race and during the race. I think he still has some margin of improvement.”
The five-year-old Do Deuce, seeking back to back Arima Kinen wins, has emerged this autumn as the top horse in Japan thanks to victories in the G1 Tenno Sho (Autumn) and the G1 Japan Cup when he quickened brilliantly to win off a muddled pace. But Lemaire believes his improving three-year-old can benefit from a drop in distance from 3000m down to 2500m.
“The trip will be perfect for him,” he says. “He knows the track at Nakayama very well because he’s run there a couple of times, and I’m very confident even if Do Deuce of course will be the horse to beat because he was so impressive in the Tenno Sho and Japan Cup. If it’s a tough race with a strong pace I think it will help us to beat Do Deuce.”
A fourth Arima Kinen triumph for Lemaire would be a welcome high on which to end his up and down year ∎
