Roger Varian has raised the tantalising prospect of Charyn treading the road less travelled by taking in the G1 Mile Championship at Kyoto on November 17, which would make Europe’s standout miler the first overseas raider to attack the race in 13 years.
The trainer revealed the possibility of making the journey to Japan when speaking to broadcaster Nick Luck during Luck on Sunday in the aftermath of the grey’s victory in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on Saturday.
“It’s on the radar and we’re putting things in place for that to happen, but it’s absolutely dependent on Charyn’s condition over the next fortnight,” Varian told Luck.
Varian has strong connections to Japanese racing: his Japanese wife, Hanako, worked for the JRA (Japan Racing Association) subsidiary JAIRS and was Darley’s director of racing in Japan, and her sister is married to leading trainer Mitsumasa Nakauchida.
No horse trained outside of Japan has won the Mile Championship, which is the second of the JRA’s two all-age Group 1 races at the distance, following the Yasuda Kinen in June. Nine overseas horses have attempted to win the race, stretching back to 2003 when the French-trained Special Kaldoun was ninth and Britain’s Tout Seul 16th behind Durandal.
The last foreign runners to try to wrest the prize were the Robert Collet-trained pair Sahpresa and Immortal Verse, third and seventh in 2011. Sahpresa was also fourth in 2010 and third in 2009, the same year the last British-trained runner, Eva’s Request, passed the post in 10th for trainer Mick Channon.
But the mile division in Japan at present, while not exactly weak, does not have a standout champion, and Charyn’s ever-present jockey this season, Silvestre de Sousa, believes the Kyoto route would be good for the flourishing four-year-old.
“He’s a fresh horse and I think he should go, if that’s what Roger and (his owner) Nurlan (Bizakov) decide they want to do,” De Sousa told Idol Horse. “Every Group 1 he’s won, he’s only got two reminders, or one smack, I never yet went to the bottom of him, so I don’t know how good he is. I push him out but he finishes his races full of running.
“I’ve never ridden in Japan, but I know the ground is usually quicker there. Charyn won on the soft again the other day but he’s not at his best on that softer ground, he goes through it, he handles it. When he won the Prix Jacques le Marois that was fast ground, proper good to firm and I presume the ground will be good to firm for the Japan race as well.”
Charyn has been a revelation this season. The son of Dark Angel was a Group 2-winning juvenile and was then thereabouts in seven races at three, including a couple of Group 1 placings, without winning.
This season, which began with a Listed success at Doncaster in March, his haul of five wins from seven starts includes Group 1 scores in the Queen Anne Stakes, Prix Jacques le Marois and the QEII, as well as unfortunate seconds in the G1 Lockinge Stakes and the G1 Prix du Moulin.
While Charyn’s season has been an unexpected breakout campaign that should see him crowned champion miler in Europe, De Sousa’s has been one of rebuilding after serving a 10-month suspension handed down by the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s stewards in May last year for a breach of betting rules.
Unsure as to what the season would hold for him upon his return, the three-time Champion Jockey in Britain (2015, 2017, 2018) picked up the Charyn ride initially by chance, making the journey to Doncaster because Varian’s stable jockey James Doyle had not recovered fully from an injury. Bizakov was impressed and the Brazilian kept the ride.
“When I started back, I was looking for a stable to give me the opportunity to come and ride out and I had a few names in the hat but Varian Stable accommodated me straight away, riding out, and Roger Varian said he’d be delighted to have me in, helping out and riding work in the morning,” De Sousa said.
“I feel grateful and I couldn’t say thanks enough. They took me in, they knew what I’m capable of doing so I’m pleased. When you surround yourself with nice people, you don’t even think about what happened, you just want to move on.
“Roger didn’t promise anything, he already had James Doyle as his stable jockey, and there’s Jack Mitchell, Ray Dawson, Raol da Silva was there as well, so I was just going into the stable as a number. Obviously, thank God, I have my name and my record behind me, and Roger threw me some nice rides, and that brought me along early in the season. Charyn was the first of those.”
Another was the Varian-trained Elmalka, the 28/1 outsider that carried De Sousa to G1 1,000 Guineas glory in the spring, but Charyn has been the main driver for a successful return for the 43-year-old.
De Sousa acknowledged he made errors in Charyn’s defeats in the Lockinge and the Moulin, both times finding himself chasing home “fluke” runaway victors, outsiders that were allowed too much of a lead and did not come back in time.
“It was a mistake the way it went and everyone makes mistakes,” he said.
But he did not go along with some of the analysis of his QEII Cup win, including that of ITV Racing’s Ruby Walsh, the former star jump jockey, who said on air that “Silvestre should have switched his whip” to his left hand in the closing stages as the winner and the second came together.
“I gave him two little taps behind the saddle in the QEII,” De Sousa said. “I didn’t pull the whip because he had a look at the big screen and he started rolling away from them, but then he came back to the right. At the same time, I wanted to keep him with the other horse. Maybe it’s not the prettiest thing, but I wanted to get my horse to compete, to eye-ball the other horse, because I know he’s a fighter, I couldn’t see the point of pulling my whip through to the left, because I was too close to the other horse at that point.
“I use the big screens in the race, I look at them and I could see the horses behind and where they were because I was watching the screen, I could see everything was off the bridle and I’d got to the front without using any gears.”
Should Charyn head to the Mile Championship before taking up stud duties at Bizakov’s Sumbe operation in Normandy next spring, he would need to arrive in Japan by November 7. The colt would remain in quarantine until November 12 before moving to Kyoto racecourse on November 13, the day before declarations.
Given the quality Charyn has shown throughout the last seven months, Varian’s stable star would be a worthy contender for a race that has so far proven so difficult for outsiders to win ∎
