Yuga Kawada enjoys good fishing, out on a boat on Lake Biwa, sometimes with friends, sometimes with family, sometimes alone.
“You saw my Instagram,” he says in deliberate English and pairs a knowing, dry smile with a chuckle.
Kawada knows all about the patience required to land a catch, and the satisfying elation that comes with it. The solitude of fishing out on Japan’s biggest freshwater lake might be a world away from the buzzing bustle of a Breeders’ Cup trackwork morning at Del Mar, but that patience, the ability to switch off and focus calmly on the task, resisting the urge to force things, that is a trait Kawada will lean on when Saturday’s G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic comes around.
Kawada rides the Noboru Takagi-trained Ushba Tesoro in the two-day event’s pinnacle race, and, as the world saw on Tuesday with the spinning, work rider-ditching tangle before exercise, the seven-year-old dirt track star is almost as complicated a character as his mercurial sire, Orfevre.
“He makes everything trouble!” Kawada laughs knowingly, and the affection he has for old “trouble” is obvious.
おっと!ウシュバテソーロくん(7さい)、アメリカで調教助手さんを振り落とす😲
— Idol Horse (@idolhorsedotcom) October 28, 2024
BCクラシックに向けてデルマーでの調整も順調、様子もいつも通りの模様。昨年はゲート入り拒否が話題になっていましたが、何かと注目の的のようです😅#ウシュバテソーロ | @BreedersCup pic.twitter.com/BQGq7t7xes
Ushba Tesoro has, after all, won a G1 Dubai World Cup in Kawada’s hands. That was the first time the two paired up and since then the record reads three wins from seven races together, three seconds and one fifth. That fifth came in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita when, as is usual, Ushba Tesoro spent most of the race near the tail before making ground into the home straight.
“Basically, he’s the same as during the workouts, he is hardly motivated so I have to go a little bit slowly in the first half,” Kawada says via Idol Horse interpreter Frank Chang. “In the middle of the race, I start to urge him to do his job, and then he will finally start to try. I think my job is to persuade him to do his job.
“He has quite a bit of ego, and he is very determined, so I have to make his determination positive for his race. He always has the choice to quit racing, so I must avoid that and constantly talk to him, to make him want to finish the race.
“When I’m riding, I value the feeling of horses a lot. They are living animals, so they have to be willing to run fast. Instead of forcing them to run, I try to approach them by encouraging them to be willing to run.”

Kawada invariably succeeds in motivating Ushba Tesoro to run for the line, it’s just a question of how soon in the run the entire will decide to start motoring. At Funabashi in his September lead-up race, it came too late and he failed to overhaul the runaway William Barows by a length.
The hope is that this time Ushba Tesoro’s wilful mind and abundant talent will come together for a famous victory. Kawada is no stranger to those, of course: it was at Del Mar in 2021 that he rode the first Japanese-trained winner at a Breeders’ Cup, Loves Only You, in the Filly And Mare Turf.
Kawada, the JRA (Japan Racing Association) champion in 2022 and a superstar on his home circuit, is quick to point out who played the lead role in that piece of Japanese and world racing history.
“It wasn’t me who created history, it was Loves Only You,” he says.
Kawada has fond memories of that day, particularly the reception he and Loves Only You received from the Del Mar locals and he is happy to be back.
“I like it here more than Santa Anita,” he confides. “When I went back to the winner’s circle after the victory, I was able to see all the Loves Only You team members were so happy. But more importantly, when I was going back to the winner’s circle, I was congratulated by all the staff from Del Mar Racecourse. I felt so grateful that all the people from here were willing to congratulate me for the historic first victory by a Japanese horse. It was truly emotional.”

But in the lead-up to that race his focus had been fixed and clear: “All I thought was, I must win this race. That’s the reason I was here.”
And it’s no different this time.
“Same as last year, I will tackle the most important race in this meet, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, with Ushba Tesoro,” he says. “I have been preparing to win this race, the most prestigious among the Breeders’ Cup races, and it will be a completely different challenge to when I won three years ago with Loves Only You.”
One challenge he is not worried about is the track configuration, which at Del Mar is pretty tight, being a one-mile oval with about a 280-metre home straight.
“I don’t think there’s any problem for him to run well at this track,” he says, noting that Ushba Tesoro has often raced successfully on the tight NAR (National Association of Racing) tracks in Japan.
“The NAR racecourses are always tight, and he did really well at those tracks, so I’m not worried about this at all. They all have left-turns, tight corners, and similar short stretches. Funabashi has wider turns, so Kawasaki is closer to this track (he has won at Kawasaki).”
Kawada will also ride Remake on Saturday, in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, and the Koichi Shintani-trained five-year-old, a two-time winner of the G3 Korea Sprint, is another that won’t be rushed into anything.
“His reasons are different from Ushba Tesoro,” he says. “I will just make sure he is comfortable because when he was young, he always got too keen and became tired early on, so he was trained to save some energy for the last bit before the winning post. This is why he is racing like this currently.”

Kawada’s desire and ability to connect with his mounts gives him a keen understanding as to how the horses are travelling in a race and to judge what is left for the finishing drive. But sometimes even the most intuitive of jockeys is left at a loss when things don’t go to plan.
That was the case in last Sunday’s G1 Tenno Sho Autumn when the exceptionally talented filly Liberty Island travelled smoothly into contention approaching the home turn, as if primed to unleash the expected acceleration that would seal a famous win. Instead, last season’s JRA Fillies’ Triple Crown heroine faded tamely.
“To be honest, I have completely no idea (what happened),” Kawada says. “Her condition was superb before the race, and she was travelling really well before the final turn, so I felt she could win easily. However, just before turning towards the final stretch, she suddenly lost all momentum. I really don’t know what happened to her, and after the race she looked exhausted. It was very unusual. Unfortunately, at the moment, I don’t have any clear answer.”
That disappointment is in the past, the outcome cannot be changed, and Kawada’s purpose now is to navigate Ushba Tesoro through a difficult contest against compatriot Forever Young, the American star Fierceness and Europe’s top colt City Of Troy.
Like any good fisherman out on the lake, Kawada will remain focused on his task, relying on patience, skill and judgement in the hope that he might just hook another historic catch ∎