'They let the horses do the talking': A window into the world of Japan's Select Sale

Cover image courtesy of the Japan Horse Racing Association

The JRHA Select Yearling Sale and JRHA Select Foal Sale this past week showcased the pinnacle of Japanese thoroughbred youngstock that will be for public sale this year. The sale always attracts international attention, and part of that is due to the stark differences between the sale’s structure versus what goes down in the rest of the world.

It was bloodstock agent Neil Jenkinson’s (FBAA) first time visiting the JRHA Select Sales, and he saw an enormous difference from the Australasian sale circuit; it was like nothing he had witnessed before.

“The two biggest farms, Northern Farm and Shadai Farm control the sale, and by that I just mean with sheer numbers and quality,” he said. “People there want to particularly buy off of them because their results on the racetrack are enormous.”

The condensed catalogues - 227 yearlings and 240 foals offered - and shortened sales preparations led to a very different kind of horse arriving in the sales ring, and one where pedigree and performance spoke above all else.

“If you’re there to buy, it’s going to cost you,” Jenkinson said. “And the hardest thing to get your head around is that when you're looking at the drafts from those two big farms, their best yearlings have been kept to join their 500 horses in work. These are the ones they don’t necessarily need to keep, and they’re making millions of dollars. It’s very unusual to watch.”

The driving force

Jenkinson, joined by Paul Messara and Matthew Dunn amongst others, visited the farms in the Hokkaido region and several training facilities ahead of the Select Sale to get a greater understanding of how the horses were prepared.

“We went to the sale with our eyes open,” he said. “The first progeny of one of the best racehorses we’ve ever seen in Equinox made a lot of money, and his father, Kitasan Black, is obviously outstanding in his market. And then when they (their progeny) walked in the ring, the bidding went to another level.”

It was a third visit to the sale for Windfield’s Arthur Hoyeau, who was instrumental in the selection of G1 Arkansas Derby winner and Japan’s 2024 Champion First Season Sire Nadal (USA).

“It’s fascinating how it works,” he said. “I go to the sale to try and understand what they’re doing better than most countries in the world.”

Hoyeau spoke of the huge investment made by the Yoshida family into thoroughbred breeding - perhaps most notable is bringing Sunday Silence (USA) to Japan in 1991 - and racing, and how this has produced the outstanding results seen both on the track and in the ring.

“The Yoshida family has been the driving force behind Japanese racing,” he said. “They've looked at what is done the best everywhere in the world and tried to put all of the best parts together. They have a very strict policy for recruiting new mares, and combined with a very strong racing following and a strong betting community to fund races, there are a lot of buyers that are very confident in their product.

“The attention to detail, sourcing the best mares and stallions they can, and the good promotion of their racing products, that’s why they are so successful. No stone is left unturned.”

“They don't miss anything,” Jenkinson said. “When you go and visit, everything that you think should be done is done, even the really small things that most wouldn't see. They don't miss a thing.

“I would hate to pay their catering bill up there because, for anybody that's registered to attend the sale, there's no bill for food or drink or anything along the way. And there's plenty of people there!”

A different atmosphere

Immediately upon arrival at the sales complex, held at Hokkaido's Northern Horse Park, the atmosphere is quite unlike any other sale.

“The most interesting thing when we arrived at the yearling sale was that there were 30 or 40 young horses out in one area,” Jenkinson said. “If that was a sale here, those big colts would be up on two legs, but you noticed that wasn’t the case there. They were all really calm, and when you start to look at them, you realise why.

“You can see they’re not full of heavy grains, and when you start to talk to the people involved, they tell you that they bring them in for about six weeks, they come into the barns in the day and go out at night. They’re not pushed along, their coats are pretty average, but they’re left to be pretty natural.

“I couldn't believe that the shoes don't go on them until they actually get to about two or three weeks before they go into the trainers. All their pre-training and work at the farms is all done in bare feet.”

Hoyeau described the ringside atmosphere as “unusual”.

“The selling is mostly driven by the trainers,” he said. “They’ve already done tours of the farms beforehand, so when they get to the sale, they’re very ready to buy. There’s a lot more anticipation about the sale than we might have.”

Hoyeau described the sale as the equivalent of a pre-Christmas bloodstock sale where “they let the horses do the talking”; the vast majority of the foals, presented still on their dams, were sold to end users for prices rising much higher than would be seen down under at the weanling sales.

The offspring of five-time Group 1 winner Midnight Bisou (USA) (Midnight Lute {USA}), from the first crop of Equinox (Jpn), equalled the second highest price paid for a Select Sale foal when the hammer fell at ¥580 million (AU$5.98 million).

“It’s quite different to how we are in Australia,” Jenkinson said. “The largest breeders are predominantly the largest racehorse owners. They’re in it for the racing, particularly for the larger farms who are breeding their future stallions and their future broodmares, so it’s a completely different market.”

Intent to export

The pre-sale parading on site is much shorter - Hoyeau noted that the foal sale’s inspection period is mere hours before the sale commences. He had visited the region in May to see many of the horses due through the ring, much in the style of other buyers, and had circled the horses he was most interested in.

“I had some interest from the Middle East for yearlings, but it’s so competitive,” Hoyeau said. “The expense of shipping and export is a bit of an unknown area, but I think more and more people are trying to do it. I'm still really trying to tempt foreign entities to try and start buying stock there, because we sold all of our good stuff to out there. They fund a lot of our racing, and we should be trying to bring those bloodlines back over here.”

While Jenkinson hadn’t intended on attending to purchase anything, the idea was floated by his companions at the sale to take something home; an expensive venture, yes, but the “point of difference” provided by strong Japanese staying blood had a certain allure.

“We're all talking about buying European imports at the moment, everything you read is about this growing trend, so could this be a point of difference?,” he said. “Can we go there and buy a Kitasan Black or that sort of horse? It wouldn’t be easy at the Select Sale. You’d need a big budget.

“I talked to somebody that's very close to Matthew Dunn’s stable while we're there and the conversation went, ‘well, if you bought something, we would be in for half’. So I think there's definitely an intent to go back.”

Breeding to win

The high value put into performance is evident just from browsing the catalogue for both sales, with pages thick with generations of local-bred black-type talent.

“They focus heavily on the mare’s performance, and it’s paying off for them,” Hoyeau said. “We’ve sold some broodmare prospects to Japan, as our ownership groups don’t contain a lot of end users, and since they’re driven by a very healthy breeding industry, they can buy our best stock anywhere in the world.”

“The mare strength of those farms is quite remarkable,” Jenkinson said. “To wander through looking at foals, and all of a sudden, you find the mare standing in front of you is Midnight Bisou and you go, ‘wow, how about that?’ I honestly barely looked at the foal. All I could think is, ‘I want to go over there and give that mare a pat or a hug’.”

The same criteria has been meticulously applied to stallion selection; 32 stallions from five countries fill out the Shadai Stallion Station roster, most of whom raced for three or more seasons, all sired by champions themselves.

“They (Japanese breeders) love to see the stallions win a Group 1 as a four or 5-year-old,” Jenkinson said. When touring training facilities, he had been surprised by the number of 3-year-olds still entire.

“We're too scared to race them as 4-year-olds, because they're worth too much money, so we retire them after eight starts. Whereas they retain a lot more colts than we do. Is that because of the way that we're preparing for sale, that we put them onto grain feed and hard work early? I don't know, but it's very different.”

Those that are locally bred and raced are amongst some of the toughest racehorses in the country.

“People tend to forget that they’re all racing in one jurisdiction, and there’s a limited number of Group races. There’s maybe only five Group 1s for 3-year-old colts, so the very best colts land in the same races. There’s no dodging one another. They run the very best horses against each other all the time. There’s no soft races.

“Harry Sweeney at Darley Japan was telling us about a stakes horse they have that’s won two from three, and he said that they have no chance of getting into the good 3-year-old races unless he wins another Group race. Here (in Australia), we can nearly get maidens getting into the black-type races once we’re at 2000 metres, but over there, there are Group 2 and Group 3 horses going into the Group 1 races. You have nowhere to hide. If you want to be a good horse here, you have to beat them.”

This is perhaps why buyers had such confidence in the product offered at the Select Sales, and were more forgiving of appearances.

“They're breeding racehorses, not necessarily sales animals. They're not quite so bothered by horses that are a bit longer than the pastern or a bit off in the knees, because they know that's what the stallion throws, and that's what they live with. Maurice is a perfect example of that. You don't need to buy the perfect looking horse.”

Something close to perfect however was one horse that made a distinct impression on Jenkinson when visiting Shadai.

“When we went and saw him, there was a bit of a crowd there and the whole place went hush as he (Kitasan Black) walked out," Jenkinson said. "He's a really big horse, as tall a horse as you'd ever see. His elbows come up to the middle of your chest. He's not massively thick either, just a really tall horse, but he doesn't throw these massive, unattractive yearlings. They're generally very nice and you’d struggle to find a nicer horse than Equinox.”

Doing things differently

“They do things spectacularly well, they’ve spared no expense,” Jenkinson related more of his visits to the area’s farms. For him, the different systems at play were worth studying and examining what could be adapted for elsewhere. “The training tracks that we saw on the farms in Hokkaido were amazing.”

Another big difference Jenkinson noted was in prizemoney; a racehorse practically paid for itself within a couple of starts. The training facilities, woodchip tracks, and ratios of staff to horses may be hard to replicate back in Australia, but there were lessons aplenty for principle racing authorities and those involved in keeping the industry afloat.

“The newcomer, first starter races at 1800 metres are US$75,000 (AU$115,000) to the winner,” he said. “There’s appearance money all the way to last. If your horse is running regularly, training doesn’t cost you anything.

“Anybody that's really keen on our business should get there and have a look. It's eye opening.”

For Hoyeau, the biggest takeaway from his annual pilgrimage to the sale is in understanding and appreciating the bloodlines at play in Japan’s racing stock. They serve as strong lessons for how breeders should examine and mate their stock the world over..

“The key is to be meticulous about what we breed,” he said. “Coolmore have had a lot of success from sending a small number of mares to Japanese stallions, and the Ecurie des Monceaux are sending a couple of mares again this year. We have to be very open minded, it's a very global business and it's only getting more and more global. We have to acknowledge the success of what they're doing.”