Tomohiro Yoshimura’s Pride

TOMOHIRO Yoshimura knows success like an old friend. In his 22 years as a jockey, he has established himself as a prolific winner on Japan’s NAR (National Association of Racing) ‘local’ circuit, riding out of Hyogo Prefecture, but his biggest success of all could be the influence he has been to his son, Seinosuke Yoshimura.

The youngster, 18, is in his first season as a JRA jockey, riding under the tutelage of Ritto-based trainer Hisashi Shimizu who is famous for preparing the brilliant two-time Horse of the Year Kitasan Black, as well as the G1 Caulfield Cup winner Mer De Glace.

“Just watch him,” Yoshimura says through Idol Horse’s interpreter, his face beaming with a father’s knowing pride, and then, leaning in as if he is sharing a precious gem of knowledge: “See him in ten years: see where he is.”

The conviction expressed in his countenance is that of not only a proud parent, but also an expert judge with a lifetime of experience to guide him as to what a good jockey looks like. He believes Yoshimura junior has the tools to make it all the way to the top.

“He wanted to be a jockey from a very young age, so I taught him everything I know,” he says. “I taught him about how to ride a horse, about horses’ mentalities, all the skills that I’ve developed, I shared all of those things with my son. I’m very proud of him and what he is doing.”

Yoshimura’s boy is already making his mark: Seinosuke’s first win came at Hanshin in March 2024 on Borzakovsky in the Listed Rokko Stakes and he has 20 JRA wins on the board, as well as, unusually, 18 NAR wins. He has followed in his father’s steps by heading home at times to the NAR’s Sonoda racecourse where he has achieved a notable feat, first matching the great Yutaka Take’s record for a JRA jockey of four wins in a day at an NAR track, and then beating it with five wins on June 20, less than four months into his career.

But Sonoda, located beside the Ina River, about nine miles northwest of downtown Osaka, is Yoshimura senior’s domain. It is where he started his career, on April 17, 2002, and he has since made his black-bodied, red-sleeved silks an iconic sight there: he is the NAR’s three-time national champion (2018, 2022 and 2023); he has won more than 3,300 races in his time, including seven in a day at Sonoda on January 11, 2023.

“I never want to lose, I always fight for the win,” he says. “The best part of a jockey’s life is winning a race, because you reward all the connections that support you, and you see them smile. If they’re happy, you’re happy as well.”

But getting to where he is in his career has not been easy, and he was not always smiling. He started out under the tutelage of trainer Tadao Hashimoto, an astute but tough master.

“At first I thought he was very strict,” he says. “I felt my master was strict on me and he was very tough every day, there were more tough days than happy days at first.

“But after a time, I could see that he cared a lot about me and my career; I felt that if I followed his instructions I might succeed as a jockey and I could see my record on the track was getting better, so I knew I was heading in the right direction. I could see he was helping me and I’m very grateful that I had a master like this.”

The depth of his respect and affection for Hashimoto and what he taught him is hammered home when he reveals his proudest moment in the saddle.

“Two days before Mr Hashimoto retired, I rode his final winner for him, A Shin Nispa at Sonoda,” he says. “I beat the other horse by a very small distance, about two centimetres was all, so this is the proudest moment of my entire career.”

It is some career, too, since his first win on Yamano Final at Sonoda in May 2002. He has won many NAR majors and broken records along the way, like most wins in a year in Hyogo prefecture, and the Hyogo record of most wins in a day, set at seven on January 11, 2023. His three national titles were achieved with win tallies of 296, 349 and 335, and at age 39 he has time to add more.   

His career came about in large part because his father, Kazumi Yoshimura, was “a big horse racing fan” and would take his son to the races as a young child. But the family had no other connection to the sport.

Kazumi was a school teacher, but his son didn’t care too much for education. “No. No, no, no,” he laughs when the idea of him enjoying school and following his father’s route in education is put to him.

“I was small as a child, so my dad suggested that I should try to become a jockey,” he continues. “I couldn’t get into the JRA jockey school, so I went instead to the NAR jockey school. I had just graduated from middle school, and at that age your body is telling you to eat a lot, but I couldn’t do that, I had diet restrictions. I was only allowed to eat what the school gave me to eat, I wanted to eat snacks and lots of other things but I couldn’t, so that’s how I felt at the time.”

His upbringing helped him to adjust to the regimen of life at the jockey school, and the rigours of early starts and long days, as he began learning the basics of horsemanship and the skills that would be the foundation of his career.

“My father being an educator, he was quite strict, like there was a set time every day that I must be home by, so even before I went to the jockey school, I already had been taught at home how to be polite, how to be orderly and disciplined, so it wasn’t too bad in the school.

“I didn’t mind the jockey ‘lockdown’, at Sonoda it was for three days in the week and it was just part of the job, so that was fine for me.”

After failing to get into the JRA school and making his way in the NAR instead, he still had some opportunities to cross over now and then and ride in JRA races, but it wasn’t until July 16, 2023, at Fukushima, that he finally had a breakthrough in that sphere.

“I couldn’t get the JRA winner for a long, long time, so I was a bit obsessed with winning a race but things always went the wrong way,” he says. “That day I won the first race and then the last race of the day, so after I won the first race all of the pressure was just relieved, it went away, and I ended up with two winners.”

His wins came on Orchid Romance for Classic-winning trainer Takahisa Tezuka, and the Takahiro Mizuno-trained Finger Click, giving him a JRA record of two wins from 157 rides going back to 2005.

“Many, many people who ride the NAR want to go to the JRA,” he says.

But his focus since his time as an apprentice has been the task at hand, riding winners on the NAR rather dreaming and planning to take the JRA jockey test and move to the more lucrative and glamourous central circuit, as NAR stars like Hiroyuki Uchida and Keita Tosaki have done.

Yoshimura is speaking to Idol Horse in Sapporo at a function on the eve of the JRA’s World All Star Jockeys contest: Tosaki and the rest of the JRA jockeys have just left the room to go to ‘lockdown’ ahead of the two-day fixture. He is the NAR representative in the 12-jockey competition.

“When I started as a jockey on the NAR every day was very tough and I didn’t have time to think about anything else, my whole focus was to get better and better on the NAR, I couldn’t think about studying for the JRA test again,” he says.

“I just feel happy when I win. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a stakes race or a lower-level race, winning is winning and that always makes me feel great.

“The JRA has its good points, but there are so many local tracks, from Mombetsu, Hokkaido in the north to Saga in the south, so each race track has its own character and I think that a lot of jockeys believe their track is the best and they have a lot of pride in where they are riding.”

His pride in Sonoda is evident. It is home, and his respect for the place, as well as the people who make it, is clear as he speaks.    

“Sonoda is a very historic track,” he says. “It’s the most historic track in the Kansai region and good riders have come from there over the years, so the Sonoda races are very competitive, it’s always a big battle from start to finish and the fans love this, this is the character of Sonoda.”

That Sonoda character is also Yoshimura’s character, and you can rest assured there is plenty of that battling Sonoda upbringing in young Seinosuke, too.