Home Or Away? Damian Lane Has “Pivotal” Decision To Make
Melbourne’s champion is enjoying his latest JRA stint along with his wife and young son and reckons on a decision “this year or next” about where his future lies.
APRIL 27, 2019 was the start of a new direction for Damian Lane, though he didn’t know it: it was the first of a three-day weekend of racing on the Japan Racing Association (JRA) circuit, and his first time riding in Japan. He walked into the Tokyo racecourse jockeys’ room unsure as to what the whole experience would bring.
“I remember it well, I felt excited to be in Japan,” Lane tells Idol Horse. “But I felt a little apprehensive because I did a stint in Hong Kong that didn’t go all that well, so it was my second stint in an overseas jurisdiction and I was a little unsure, I guess.”
Lane’s “trepidation,” as he refers to his feelings that day, was the consequence of his Hong Kong experience four years earlier, at the more tender age of 21: he arrived at Sha Tin with 500 career wins already in the bag, but his three-month stint in that intense two-track city became a struggle that yielded only five wins.
In Hong Kong, a jockey flies solo for the most part and cannot have an agent to help pick up rides, but in Japan Lane found that he had a structure of people already in place to support him.
“I was taking a lot on trust,” he says. “That I was with a good interpreter, Adam Harrigan, and that I was set up with a good trainer, Noriyuki Hori, and as it turned out they were the best two people I could have ever been directed towards and worked with. They really helped set up a good start for me. They’ve both been very good to work with.”
Lane’s first JRA day was lowkey: five rides, no wins, but a couple of top three placings. Days two and three were much different, though.
“I rode a winner on one of Mr. Hori’s horses the second day and on my third day I rode a Group race winner for Carrot Farm, which is a syndicate I’ve had good success for since,” he says with unconscious understatement.
It’s pointed out to Lane that he steered four winners past the Tokyo winning post that second day, from only six rides.
“Really, I had four? Oh, wow,” he says. “I remember clearly I didn’t ride one my first day, but very early on the second day I rode one for Mr. Hori.”
The Group 3 win on day three came aboard Mer De Glace, a horse he would pilot to victory in the G1 Caulfield Cup in Melbourne six months later.
“So, from being unsure and apprehensive, that first weekend went from a little bit of trepidation to reassurance, and it was all positive from there,” he recalls
It was a turning point, a weekend that shaped his career in a way that meant Japan and its horses would become prominent elements. Two weeks later he rode Normcore to win the G1 Victoria Mile – a spare ride resulting from a Christophe Lemaire suspension – and his recent victory in the G1 Tenno Sho Spring on Redentor was his sixth and latest JRA Group 1, having ridden in Japan every year bar one since 2019, the exception being Covid-impacted 2021.
Lane’s current short-term stint has brought success similar to past forays, and he is riding at an impressive strike rate of 30 percent for his seven wins since he kicked-off two weeks ago. Yet there is a difference this time: he has with him not only his wife Bonnie, but also their six-month-old son Charlie. With a young family, decisions for the future must always be considered and made with particular care.
“I feel like I’m at a really pivotal point in my career where a decision has got to be made sooner rather than later if we do make any changes,” he says. “Japan is definitely an option I’ve always thought about and it’s quite possible I could pursue trying for a long-term licence.”
Lane, 31, stepped out as a precocious apprentice in Perth back in 2009, but within two years he had already made the move to Melbourne where he rose readily to a position among the elite: he won his first Melbourne premiership last year and still leads this season’s metropolitan standings by 13 wins.
“Me, my wife, we love Melbourne, so that’s not going to be an easy or quick decision,” he said. “Riding in Sydney is something that has been successful recently, but I think probably it would be either Melbourne or Japan long term.
“Japan comes with a great degree of difficulty,” he continues. “It’s not as simple as other jurisdictions and that’s another reason why it’s not a straight cut decision, because there’s a lot of ground work that goes into applying for a full-time licence here, and a lot of commitment. It’s certainly something that has been spoken about in my circle and a decision on whether it can be pursued wouldn’t be far away, I’d say this year or next.”
If he and Bonnie do opt to try to make the move to Japan full-time, they have the comfort of knowing Charlie’s first experience of the country has been positive.
“He’s loved it so far in Japan,” Lane says. “He loves being out, he loves being in the busy streets and the bright lights, he thinks it’s amazing. He’s always got something to look at and his eyes are flickering, taking it all in. It’s really cool to watch and he’s changing and developing every day.
“It’s very much different with the three of us. You’ve got to make sure they’re comfortable first and foremost before yourself, and we obviously spend a lot of family time on my days off, so it’s been amazing to share that experience.
“Monday and Tuesday in Japan I have no racing commitments, so it’s a bit of down time with the family, which is great because you don’t often get two days with no horses in Australia where it is very much around the clock racing with trackwork and trials and night racing, it’s like a 24/7 event there.”
It might be said that a settled and happy home life outstrips any job success, but often the two are hooked together and Lane’s work place achievements in Japan are impressive. They include a Derby win on Tastiera in 2023, as well as wins in Japan’s two epic fan-voted grand prix races, the G1 Takarazuka Kinen and the G1 Arima Kinen, both on Lys Gracieux in 2019.
“You can’t help but notice how big those races are and what they mean to people here,” he says. “With the crowds on-course, with the media attention they get. To have achieved success in those races has been enormous and just taken my career to a new level. I was booked to ride Lys Gracieux at the end of that first trip and to win the Takarazuka Kinen on her, to what then she would carry through and do for me, was incredible.”
Carrot Farm’s Lys Gracieux also carried Lane to G1 Cox Plate glory in Melbourne that autumn and he has since become a regular go-to for Japanese connections when their horses race overseas. He has mopped up big races on Japanese runners in Hong Kong, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Australia, and feels part of the ‘team Japan’ construct that the rest of the world sees when Japanese horses go raiding for offshore prizes.
“You don’t ride for all Japanese connections, but it does feel like you’re riding under their banner,” he says. “They’re always Japanese-owned, Japanese-trained and usually Japanese-bred, so you feel like you’re representing Japan a little bit, for sure.”
His profile is such that he has picked up the ride on G1 Satsuki Sho hero Museum Mile in the G1 Tokyo Yushun on June 1, now that the colt’s classic-winning partner Joao Moreira’s own short-term licence has ended.
“I was very impressed with his Satsuki Sho win,” Lane says. “He’s a young, up and coming horse, I mean, they all are as three-year-olds, but he looks like he’s got very good potential.
“There’s probably not a lot between him and Croix Du Nord: I thought Joao gave Museum Mile a very good ride, and Croix Du Nord was probably exposed a little bit early and had a little bit of a tougher run, so off equal runs, I don’t think there’s a lot between the two horses from what I’ve seen so far.”
Lane’s profile, off the back of his achievements – he has 155 JRA wins at a 23.6 percent strike rate – is such now that there is a certain expectation of success when he rides in Japan.
“I definitely feel that, it’s noticeable,” he says. “Not that I’m ever really looking at betting odds, but you do notice the odds when you’re going out to mount up and they’re always shorter than they should be, so there’s clearly an expectation that I’m going to do well. It’s just a little bit of added pressure, but one that I take with pride because it means people expect good things from me.
“I just feel like I’ve earned it so I try to embrace it, and I know I can only do my job to the best I can. If horses are going out under the odds they should be and they get beat, I just have to soldier on: there’s not much I can do about that, I just try to do my job the best I can on every horse and just continue on my way.”
That approach has taken him far along a path he didn’t quite envisage when he ended that first spring day at Tokyo without a win.
“The snowball effect that first stint in Japan had…” he pauses and adds. “To ever think before then of what could have come as a result of that first trip, you could never have even dreamt it up.” ∎
