Ryusei Sakai

What Are Ryusei Sakai’s Strengths as a jockey?

Ryusei Sakai is an emerging star on the Japanese racing scene and by his mid-twenties he already has a good amount of top-level racing experience outside his homeland. This is undoubtedly a strength as he continues to secure big-race rides on Japanese horses, which often in the past would have been ridden by big-name overseas jockeys.

Sakai is not yet the finished article (see Mad Cool’s G1 Chairman’s Sprint Prize defeat in Hong Kong) but he is at the forefront of a new generation of riders and has the potential to be a challenger for the JRA leading jockey title.

His position has much to do with tactical awareness, and a particular ability to rate a race from the front: that was evident spectacularly when he made all to win the G2 Godolphin Mile on Bathrat Leon, and again when leading on Lemon Pop to win consecutive G1 Champions Cups at Chukyo Racecourse.

And, while Mad Cool’s Sha Tin run is best forgotten, he showed astuteness on the same horse when sticking to the rail while others shifted centre track on the rain-affected ground, a move that ensured victory in the 2024 running of the G1 Takamatsunomiya Kinen.

Ryusei Sakai’s Origin Story

Sakai was born in Tokyo where his father, Hidemitsu Sakai, rode as a jockey on the local NAR circuit and is now a trainer at Ohi racecourse. Sakai’s uncle was also a jockey, and his grandfather was a stable attendant at Nagoya racecourse. 

He graduated from the JRA apprentice jockey school and started riding as a licensed apprentice for trainer Yoshito Yahagi in 2016. He had a respectable 25 winners that first season.

Sakai reached a half-century of wins for the first time in 2021, reached 98 wins in 2022 and in 2023 he posted 107 wins to place seventh on the JRA leaderboard.

The support of his mentor Yahagi has provided him with big race wins and exploits in some of the world’s biggest races outside of Japan. 

Which horse is Ryusei Sakai most famous for riding?

Forever Young’s exploits in Dubai and the United States in the spring of 2024 make him Sakai’s most famous mount. The Yahagi-trained colt’s narrow defeat in a captivating edition of the Kentucky Derby shone the spotlight on Sakai. His mount was leaned on and bumped by the eventual runner-up Sierra Leone, as the two horses closed on the victorious Mystik Dan, and there was outcry in many quarters about the stewards’ inaction.

Forever Young was beaten only two noses into third, with Sakai’s rival on Sierra Leone, Tyler Gaffalione, seen reaching out and touching Forever Young in the final strides. Going so close in a controversial running of America’s most famous race did Sakai’s profile a world of good.   

What is Ryusei Sakai’s best ever ride?

Bathrat Leon in the 2022 G2 Godolphin Mile is Ryusei Sakai’s most memorable winning ride so far. At that time, he was a little known young Japanese rider on a long-odds outsider contesting the first thoroughbred race of the prestigious Dubai World Cup card.  

Sakai took the Yahagi-trained four-year-old straight to the front and set the pace. A length clear approaching the final turn, the rider changed his hands and signalled a change of pace: Bathrat Leon exited the turn two lengths to the good, and under a determined Sakai drive she still held the advantage by a length and a half at the line.