When Ryusei Sakai produced a ride of impeccable judgement for an upset win on William Barows in the JPN G2 Nippon TV Hai at Funabashi racetrack, his Wednesday masterclass helped shed a little more illumination on Japan’s NAR (National Association of Racing) circuit.
It’s not often that any but the most ardent hardcore fans outside of Japan take note of the happenings on Japan’s second tier, but Sakai’s astute ride on William Barows gave us the compelling image of the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic-bound Ushba Tesoro finishing a swift-closing second at the piping hot odds of 1.2.
Near silence hogged the floodlit air when Sakai steered the front-running third-favourite to the unsaddling area. He had controlled and stolen the race, which was billed under the ‘Road to JBC’ marketing tag but has found itself smack bang on the flight path to the Breeders’ Cup.
The 1800m contest moved into the international domain a year ago, becoming a rare spotlight contest on Japan’s NAR circuit when Ushba Tesoro, that year’s Dubai World Cup winner, claimed the prize en route to finishing fifth in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic.
This was meant to be a repeat performance, designed to prime the Noboru Takagi-trained seven-year-old for Del Mar on November 2. His rider, Yuga Kawada, was content to let the well-travelled JRA (Japan Racing Association) star settle about eight lengths off the leader, and that extended to more like 10 lengths when William Barows began to exert pressure exiting the back straight.
Kawada gave the advancing Ushba Tesoro one hit with the whip in the home run, conscious perhaps that his mount was first-up since March and that the big target is still a few weeks away. William Barows’ stride shortened and Ushba Tesoro kept closing, but not quickly enough: it will be tougher still if he gives away such a head-start at Del Mar.
It should be noted, too, that Ushba Tesoro was attempting what only Konobuki Noni in 1965 and 1966 has achieved, winning the Nippon TV Hai in successive years.
“I think his condition was better than last year, but we couldn’t catch the front-runner. Maybe he wasn’t fully motivated, at the point where the horse should have grabbed the bit, he didn’t,” Takagi told the press afterwards and also noted that 1800 metres is “a bit short for him,” that he will be better suited by the 2000m at Del Mar, and that he should improve for the run.
As is normal in these JRA-NAR crossover races, the first three home were trained on the central government administered JRA circuit, while the first of the local government administered NAR horses was the Urawa-based Naniwa Sateoki in fourth, one place ahead of the Breeders’ Cup entrant Derma Sotogake.
NAR tracks don’t often attract international attention, but Funabashi-keiba’s Japanese language Youtube channel livestream – shared on social media among English-speaking fans – spiked at more than 50,000 viewers in the seconds before William Barows burst from the gate, dipping to 20,000 soon after the finish.
A year and a half on from NAR galloper Mandarin Hero’s startlingly close second in the G1 Santa Anita Derby in California, the JRA (Japan Racing Association)’s rough diamond brother, a 15-track circuit, all sandy dirt bar one inner turf oval at Morioka, is showing its value to the outside world.
The JRA is the ‘Japanese racing’ most people outside of Japan know: the JRA horses are the ones that have travelled and won Group 1s the world over in the last 30 years for storied names like Yutaka Take, Hideyuki Mori and Yoshito Yahagi. The NAR is the blue-collar version: it is historically working-class and betting focused, jockeys wear their own personal silks to identify them, no matter which horses they ride, and the whole package, facilities included, does not have the same polish as the JRA.
But the NAR is important to the greater horse racing ecosystem in Japan: the NAR held 1,176 race meetings in 2023 for turnover of approximately US$7.1 billion; the JRA held 288 race meetings that year for turnover of US$22.7 billion.
The NAR might not match the mighty JRA, but it is a significant concern and can produce high-class horses, too. And it is following the JRA’s example with marketing campaigns off-track and ambitious horsemen on-track seeking to elevate its status and draw international interest. This year it introduced a revamped Dirt Triple Crown at Oi, the third leg of which, the Japan Dirt Classic, is a week on from the Nippon TV Hai and will see the G1 Kentucky Derby third Forever Young take his last step towards the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Mandarin Hero’s own Stateside exploits have been a boon in promoting the NAR. He is trained by Terunobu Fujita out of the NAR’s flagship ‘Tokyo City Keiba’ venue, Oi racetrack, located in Tokyo’s southern reaches, about 18 miles from Funabashi, which is located to the east of the sprawling metropolis.
Another Oi trainer, Junpei Morishita, has as his stable’s slogan ‘Oi to the World,’ and recognises the role Fujita and others, such as Sonoda trainer Masashi Atarashi who took Igniter to the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen this year, have played in advancing the NAR’s profile.
“When I started as a trainer, I already felt one day this was going to happen, and I was working towards it. Even though I could not be the first person to go overseas, it is a great feeling watching your fellow NAR trainers appear on the global stage. The pioneers are always the hardest to be, but they give you courage. They showed us the possibility, and they gave everyone here hope,” he told Idol Horse.
With that in mind, Funabashi in September is as much about the Breeders’ Cup in November, or Saudi Arabia in February, or Dubai in March, as it is about the traditional domestic path to the JBC (Japan Breeding Farms Cup) Classic, fashioned after the Breeders’ Cup, being a NAR-JRA coming-together that moves around different NAR tracks year-on-year.
In fact, the NAR’s Nippon TV Hai has long been a race of international scope, yet such is the niche nature of the NAR in the grand, global scheme of things, that perhaps few have picked up on it.
This century, 10 past winners of the race had raced overseas or subsequently went offshore to compete: Agnes Digital, in 2001, won that year’s G1 Hong Kong Cup, was then sixth in the G1 Dubai World Cup and second in the G1 QEII Cup at Sha Tin; others include Seeking The Dia, the 23-race winner Smart Falcon, G3 Korea Cup winner Chrysolite, and the two-time Dubai World Cup contender Awardee.
All were JRA runners competing against their NAR counterparts at Funabashi, but these NAR-JRA cross-over races are not to be sniffed at, and the determination among NAR trainers to raise their stock to JRA levels is unwavering.
“Compared to the JRA, Oi’s training facility is limited,” Morishita explained, and the same is true of all NAR tracks. “For example, the JRA horses can train on the slope, but we only have flat training tracks. With these limited conditions, we still want to train horses that can be competitive against the great horses around the world.
“The specific goal now is to train horses that are competitive against the JRA horses. Using this as a stepping stone, we want to try the big races and Grade 1 races overseas and win them in the future.”
Given racing’s current strength in Japan, and that Mandarin Hero is not even the best horse on the NAR circuit, perhaps it won’t be long before an NAR horse makes a Group 1 breakthrough overseas.
For now, though, the NAR’s feature races can continue to play an important role in producing offshore raiders.
