Mitsumasa Nakauchida: The Pressure And The Pleasure
Liberty Island’s trainer speaks to Idol Horse before and after the mare’s defeat in Dubai and reveals a mind fixed on his horses, be that training for Group 1s or retraining off-track.
MITSUMASA NAKAUCHIDA was collected and cordial, that’s his usual manner. His suit was sober and his bearing was ‘chin-up’ and proper, but the tie was the subtle give away: loosened just a little, no longer drawn tight to his shirt’s cutaway collar. After a scorching day that had turned to a stifling night, as the bustle of the Dubai World Cup crowd bottle-necked at an all-too-narrow exit point, there was a preoccupied glumness to Nakauchida’s countenance.
“She didn’t show that turn-of-foot she has, I think she needed the run,” he said as he processed out loud Liberty Island’s disappointing eighth in the G1 Dubai Turf and connected dots back to last October’s G1 Tenno Sho Autumn when, returned from an injury lay-off, the mare had not engaged her powerful late speed when called upon.
He said he believed it was “similar” this time. Liberty Island, for all her brilliance, and for all that she had looked fluid, fit, and unflustered during her lead-in trackwork, had not turned up with her mind primed for the task Nakauchida had set her. The five-year-old had not switched into full race mode and had performed below her optimum.
“It’s her personality,” Nakauchida continued. “She was like that when she was three, but that was against three-year-old fillies and she could do that and win.”
His words added lightbulb context to Liberty Island’s incredible G1 Oka Sho win, that first of her three Triple Tiara race successes, in April 2023. She was 1.6 favourite that day, first-up for the campaign: she raced third-last in a field of 18 under Yuga Kawada, who had to switch her widest of all into the home straight and then drive hard to unlock the brilliant speed that carried her to a three-quarter length win over the much inferior Kona Coast. That was a heart-in-mouth run for her supporters.
“It’s a different story now, she’s against top horses, she can’t run just 80 per cent of her ability against the boys, against top-class horses,” Nakauchida added.
With that thought, he said that he believed the race would bring her on, that it seemed she now needed a run to get going at this level of competition, and the defeat could put her spot-on for the G1 QEII Cup at Sha Tin. He hoped.
Every day is a lesson when you work with race horses: any trainer will tell you that, whatever their age and experience, be they thirty-something George Boughey or 89-year-old D. Wayne Lukas. Nakauchida, 47, the Japan Racing Association’s (JRA) leading trainer by wins in 2021, lives that lesson almost every minute. Seven days in every week, he is thinking about the horses in his life, analysing their defeats, preparing them with victory in mind: even his regular family time is spent riding and retraining ex-racers.
A few hours before Liberty Island’s disappointment, Nakauchida sat down at a table beyond the lobby in the light, cool space of the Meydan Hotel. He had just returned from some rare family time away from all things equine, a taxi dash with his wife, Yoko, and daughter across to Dubai Mall and back.
“It’s too big,” he said, and after commenting on how many times he lost his bearings in the gargantuan cathedral of commerce, the talk shifted readily back to his life’s passion and whether he gets any time to unwind from it all.
“I have spare time because Monday is a day off,” he said. He meant the time between morning and evening stables.
“During that time off, I do retraining with ex-racehorses,” he continued. “So it’s more horses but I do enjoy it. No pressure, it’s for pleasure. I purely just enjoy riding.
“My daughter rides and my wife rides as well, we go together to Ritto Stable, not far from our home. My family is very spoiled because we are riding a Deep Impact and a Galileo,” he grins.
The horses are Fox Creek, a winner of four from 19 for the stable in his racing days, and Danon Frontier, a maiden after 11 races, including over hurdles.
“It’s great family time and I do love this time,” he continued. “But it’s so important in this industry to do retraining, it’s getting more important, and in my opinion, people in the industry need to get involved more and more.
“It’s improving in Japan and they have a few competitions of ex-racehorses, showjumping, and they’re getting bigger. I competed last year a few times, I didn’t win, but I was only there for fun. People need to be doing more for these horses, that’s the important thing.”
With Liberty Island’s race still ahead of him, he spoke with energy and enthusiasm, not only about his passion for retraining, or his star mare, but also his latest classic prospect Eri King, a colt for which he and owner Susumu Fujita have serious G1 Satsuki Sho and G1 Tokyo Yushun ambitions.
“He breezed before I came to Dubai and worked really good, so that was three weeks before the race. He’ll have a more serious gallop next and he’ll come on for that gallop, I’m sure,” he said.
But, while Eri King heads into the classic season with purpose, he said he had eased back on Liberty Island’s sister, the twice-raced Madison Girl: there would be no classic run in the G1 Oka Sho for her after she was sixth behind Embroidery in a Group 3 at Tokyo in February. That’s Nakauchida’s way, taking his time, considering what the horse needs to have happen for it to achieve its optimum performance.
That is why his stable is renowned for its excellent win rate. His team has won the JRA’s end of season award for the best strike rate four times (2017, 2019, 2021, 2022).
“I try to look at each horse and see them as an individual,” he said. “Most of my owners are patient, so we can give all the horses time and not rush into any races, so if they’re not ready to run, don’t run them. That’s the way, even if it’s the Derby or 2,000 Guineas, we don’t rush them into the races. If they’re ready they run.
“I’m actually lucky to be in this position. Most of the horses are well-bred and expensive. If they run, most of the owners expect to win, so I cannot afford to make them lose.”
He has a book of 70 horses – 28 allowed into his Ritto stable at any one time, the maximum allowed as per JRA rules – all with fine bloodlines. His owners are among the biggest in the world including Northern Farm’s Katsumi Yoshida and the Northern Farm affiliates Sunday Racing, Carrot Farm and Silk Racing, as well as Shadai, Godolphin, Danox Co. Ltd, Sheikh Fahad, Kaneko Makoto Holdings, and Fujita of Forever Young and Umamusume fame.
Add to that list DMM Dream Club whose black and green colours gained worldwide exposure when Loves Only You, trained by Yoshito Yahagi, became Japan’s first Breeders’ Cup winner. Nakauchida, who is a regular at sales in the U.S., Britain, and Australia in recent years, joined with DMM at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale earlier this year to purchase a Home Affairs filly out of Sunlight for a sale record A$3.2 million.
“DMM also sent me a two-year-old this year for the first time. She came from the Select Sale and she’s out of Cosmopolitan Queen,” he said.
“They want to breed from the fillies they buy and build a broodmare band. We were actually after the yearling out of Winx last year, at the Inglis Easter Sale, but we didn’t have a chance because the price went quite high too quickly, so we didn’t get into that sale at all.”
He didn’t get the 4.4 million guineas Frankel at Tattersalls last October either, but the fact that he was underbidder there, as he was for the 3.4 million guineas Galileo top lot in 2018, speaks to the confidence his owners have in him as a horseman.
Nakauchida’s horse sense is a lifetime in the making: he grew up at Shigaraki Farm, a pre-training facility near Ritto run by his father, Katsuzi. Inspired by the great champion galloper Oguri Cap, the young Nakauchida decided horses were to be his life: he learned to ride, at 16 moved to Ireland to finish school and studied Equine Business at college in England.
He rode as an amateur, in bumpers and hurdles for John ‘JJ’ Lennon, and on the flat while working for Richard Hannon and Sylvester Kirk; then came spells with Sir Mark Prescott, Criquette Head-Maarek and the late Bobby Frankel in California, before returning to Japan to learn the JRA system under trainer Mitsuru Hashida.
Since he was licensed in 2014, he has won a fillies’ triple crown among eight Group 1 races, and competes at the high end of the leading trainers’ table, but he is modest about all of that, pointing out that it is not about him, that it’s a team effort of riders, grooms, and all. His role, he says, is to find the right connections with the humans who work for him and the horses they work with.
But he does have a personal itch to scratch as the stable’s leader, and Liberty Island’s defeat later that night meant it is still there, unassuaged.
“I haven’t won many races even in Japan yet, but the quality of horses I have in my stable, they need to compete in international races,” he said. “They’re good enough to win overseas races, so that’s the way I look at it. They should win, so it’s just a matter of time, I think.”
He’s gone close. Liberty Island was second to Romantic Warrior on the champion’s home patch in December, and Prognosis has been unlucky to finish second to Hong Kong’s finest on two occasions at Sha Tin, and then ran into the remarkable Via Sistina in last year’s G1 Cox Plate.
“There is always another horse in front of them and those horses, most of the time, are superstars. Prognosis was favourite for the Cox Plate but Via Sistina turned out to be a freakish horse. Same thing in Hong Kong, we met Romantic Warrior. But that’s racing,” he said.
“One day, I want to be the trainer of a freak of a horse, these horses that are outstanding champions.”
Those horses rarely land at any trainer’s door, but as Nakauchida left Meydan, he had that hope in the future that every classic season brings. Who knows? Perhaps the Satsuki Sho-bound Eri King will be the one, or maybe DMM’s Magic Millions filly.
“Look at the Satsuki Sho, for example, we actually don’t know and that makes it a good puzzle,” he said. “It’s a good thing, a fun thing about racing, it makes it all exciting.” ∎
