Ozeki’s York Adventure Stirs Memories Of Mr. C.B.

TOMOHITO OZEKI is impressed with York racecourse. He has just finished a tour of the famous old track’s facilities, making sure all is as he anticipated it would be before he ships his star colt Durezza from his summer lodging in Newmarket on a three-hour journey northward by road to the Knavesmire for the G1 Juddmonte International Stakes.

“I can feel the tradition within this racecourse, but I also think this racecourse is so classy and beautiful,” he says, and he’s not wrong.

Word is the Romans raced horses at York, and the sport in its modern form has been happening on the Knavesmire for 300 years or more. This is the place where in 1851 The Flying Dutchman and Voltigeur clashed in one of the most famous match races of all, where Roberto stunned the crowd in handing the great Brigadier Gerard his only defeat, and where the mighty Frankel cemented his legend.

Ozeki is seated at a table within the ground floor lounge of the track’s Melrose Stand. He is enjoying a plate of sharply-cut triangular sandwiches and golden-brown chips, ‘posh’ Yorkshire style. Outside, the grey clouds are lowering above the still quietude of the arena, which by the time of the International Stakes will be thronging with thousands of fans drawn to see one of Europe’s great race meetings.  

As a Classic-winning trainer he is well-acquainted with the sport’s major occasions, but his first encounter with such greatness came almost 40 years ago as an eager fan. 

“The first racecourse I went to was Nakayama,” he says.

He was 13 years old, his first year in middle school, he explains, and he went with his father, Junpei, an office worker whose connection to horse racing was a passing interest, enough to watch the big Group 1 races, but nothing more.

“I am from Chiba Prefecture and Nakayama is in Chiba,” he adds matter-of-factly.

That makes sense, but he is selling short the encounter. His first day at the races wasn’t any old weekend meeting at his local track. It turns out that it was December 23, 1984, and he and his father were two lucky fans in a heaving, excited crowd assembled to watch a three-way match in the Arima Kinen, Japan’s epic end-of-year grand prix.  

The big clash was between two Triple Crown winners, the four-year-old Mr. C.B. and the year-younger Symboli Rudolf, plus Katsuragi Ace, who the previous month had become the first Japanese horse to win the Japan Cup.

Ozeki looks through his spectacles to a point in the middle-distance, but his vision is not focused there, he is seeing something within his mind, memories from that gripping day that has shaped his life.

“It was a big, big race, and the atmosphere in the racecourse was unreal,” he says with a steady, thoughtful care that feels almost reverential. “You couldn’t help but get excited when you were there. It felt like everything was unreal. It was such a great first impression.”

Yusuke Sai of Northern Farm’s international team is interpreting the interview, but for a moment he too is caught up in the magic of the projected memory.

“I just got excited about what he’s saying, I didn’t even know this,” says Sai with a wide-eyed laugh at himself and adds, “Wow. Incredible.”

Mr. C.B. was Ozeki’s hero. It was the dark bay’s headline-grabbing Triple Crown campaign that had captured his spirit the previous year and locked youthful emotions, hopes and dreams into the world of horse racing. The colt’s Arima Kinen defeat behind Symboli Rudolf did not dampen his enthusiasm.

“I was a sixth-grader in 1983 when Mr. C. B. became the first triple crown winner after 19 years. It was big news, and I first knew horse racing because of that. After that, I became more and more fond of racing, I became a racing fan,” he says, and the spark of that recollection ignites his calm countenance with a broadening smile.

So how does a teenage sports fan from Yachiyo City, about 20 miles east of downtown Tokyo, with no tangible connection to the sport he loves, end up as an established Group 1 trainer in the JRA (Japan Racing Association) system running a Classic-winning horse in one of Europe’s biggest races? 

“Several years later I became a veterinarian,” he says, and that was his ‘in.’ To be clear, he trained to be a vet for the pointed purpose of becoming a racehorse trainer. Ozeki is the fan living the dream.

After graduating from Iwate University with his veterinary degree, he enrolled in the JRA’s stable hand course and was seconded to the Kazuo Fujisawa stable. It was 1999, the season after Fujisawa had been part of history when he saddled the ace miler Taiki Shuttle to win the G1 Prix Jacques le Marois in France, becoming Japan’s second overseas Group 1 winner, just a week after Seeking The Pearl had become the first.

It should be noted, too, that Fujisawa sent Zenno Rob Roy to York in 2005 for a neck second in ’The Juddmonte.’

Ozeki was only with Fujisawa for a couple of months but the connection would prove to be influential to his career path. When a JRA trainer is granted their licence they have a year to fill before they are allowed to move into their appointed stable and begin the business of training: Ozeki was licensed in the spring of 2008, just as Fujisawa was preparing another overseas raider.

“I heard Casino Drive was heading to the United States, so I asked Fujisawa if I could go together with the horse, as a learning experience. He agreed, so I went to the U.S. with them twice, once to Belmont Park then to (California) for the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita. Casino Drive won an allowance race at Santa Anita before heading to the Breeders’ Cup, and he was stabled at Hollywood Park,” he says, recalling his role in preparing Casino Drive for his G2 Peter Pan Stakes win at Belmont that May, and ultimately his defeat in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“The race they were challenging for at Belmont wasn’t even an invitational race (it’s not like today when you go to big events and many things are arranged and some paid for) so there were a lot of adversities, but it was also a great endeavour. Because of those experiences, I always wanted to try winning the top races around the world.”

He has already tasted offshore glory. After his two-time G1 Sprinters Stakes hero Red Falx found the G1 Hong Kong Sprint at Sha Tin too hot to handle in 2016, Ozeki was not put off. Three years later he was back with Glory Vase and was rewarded with a victory in the G1 Hong Kong Vase: they repeated the win in 2021.

He has also experienced Longchamp in the autumn, with Stellar Wind acting as a competing travelling companion to Kizuna, and then in 2023 he saddled the G3-winning mare Through Seven Seas to place fourth in the G1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

“Each racecourse and each horse are different, so there are a lot of things to pay attention to when helping those horses adjust to new environments,” he says. “But, overall, I think there are some basic things and I think it is important to keep those things as a common base and always be flexible with all kinds of circumstances.

“To put it most simply, it’s to keep your horses happy, and at the same time keep your stable staff working with the horses happy.”

After his initial time with Fujisawa back in 1999, Ozeki’s career took him to Tatsuo Fujiwara’s operation, then to Masamichi Wada, another trainer with a veterinarian licence, and then from 2002 to 2008 he was assistant trainer to another Miho-based handler Yoichi Okubo.

Okubo’s background was different to Ozeki’s: he was the eldest son of the jockey and trainer Suekichi Okubo, he wanted to be a jockey until he grew too big, but he still took an unusual route into the sport, graduating and working as an architect before eventually joining his father’s stable as assistant trainer.

“Mr. Okubo is very unique, he is a character,” Ozeki says of his old boss, who is now retired from the training game and is a popular media commentator.

“I learned a lot of things from him such as the practical things to do with training, but also he would often enter his horses in difficult races, above their class. For example, he would send a horse who had won only one race to the Kikuka Sho. When I talked about this with him, he told me ‘If a horse doesn’t run, he can never win.’ That sentence is what I remember most.”

There is discussion about the interpretation of Okubo’s ‘you have to be in it to win it’ approach, and the name of the former trainer Clive Brittain pops up, leading to mention of his Terimon, that horse’s 500-1 second-place in the Derby at Epsom, and, two years later, his 16-1 win on this very course in the Juddmonte International Stakes.

There is interest among the group, which also includes Durezza’s groom and work rider Yoichi Yahara, about Terimon’s feat. Durezza is expected to be similar odds to Terimon in ‘The Juddmonte’ against Europe’s star three-year-old City Of Troy, but Ozeki is unperturbed. He felt after the Kikuka Sho win in October 2023 that the son of Duramente would be an ideal horse to travel and although the horse ran poorly in his one start this season, the G1 Tenno Sho Spring over two miles in April, he and owners Carrot Farm decided York was the right target.

Durezza’s biggest win was achieved in Japan’s St Leger over 3000m but dropping down in distance to 2000m does not concern Ozeki. He says the flat track layout and the way races are run at York can favour front-runners, as Durezza can be, and the short-clipped grass is how Japanese horses like it.

“Also, if we want to set our goal as the Japan Cup in the autumn, the time of this race is very easy to put in the schedule, and we think the racecourse and the racing style here will suit him,” he says.  

“With regard to the race distance, the first time I thought this was a really good horse was after he won the 2000-metre Hong Kong Jockey Club Trophy last year in June, a conditions race at Tokyo. Although before that I thought this horse was good, after that race I was convinced that he would at least become a group winner. So, it was not a hasty decision for him to cut back in distance.”

Ozeki’s view is that pedigree is an obvious factor to be considered when assessing a horse’s best distance but he is not one to pigeon-hole a horse as one thing or another because each is an individual. He adds that character and tractability, how well a horse settles and what its disposition might be, are also key elements, as well as class.

“A few years ago, I had a horse named Busho whose pedigree implied that he was a miler,” he relates. “He was second on debut, so at first he was able to come close to a win at a mile, but gradually he probably lost interest in racing and began to lose badly.

“He didn’t respond well in races, he seemed to be slow, so I tried him in a longer distance and put him in a 2600-metre race. He lost badly, and initially I didn’t know what to do, but then I thought this horse was not maintaining his focus through the races, so I put him in a 1000-metre straight race at Niigata and he finally broke his maiden. The whole thing might just be a coincidence, but since this type of thing can happen with horses, I try not to be overly obsessed with a horse having a set distance.”

That willingness to trust in a horse’s versatility and his own understanding of its character, he hopes, will bring further rewards to his stable.

“I have learned a lot not only from other trainers, but also from the farms and many other people,” he says. “I may not be specialised in one particular method, but the versatility of my skills learned from all these people may instead become a characteristic of mine.”

Ozeki is 52, he has worked for and learned from some unique and influential teachers, and he has progressed to a place where the life he dreamed of as a young fan watching Mr. C.B. race is now his reality. But he will never forget the root of it all. 

“First, before I became a trainer, I was just a horse racing fan. I really love horse racing,” he says.