John Ingles looks at a strong challenge from Europe for Sunday’s Japan Cup which last went overseas in 2005.
City of Troy might have failed in his Breeders’ Cup Classic bid on his final start before taking up stallion duties next year but now stablemate and fellow Derby winner Auguste Rodin has the chance to end his racing career with a major overseas victory in Sunday’s Japan Cup.
Unlike City of Troy who had to adapt to a completely different surface at Del Mar, Auguste Rodin will have conditions that he’s both familiar with and which have proven to suit him ideally. While he gained his first Group 1 win in the mud at Doncaster in the Futurity Trophy as a two-year-old, all his subsequent top-level wins – in the Derby, Irish Derby, Irish Champion Stakes, Breeders’ Cup Turf and this year, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes – have all come on ground firmer than good. It’s almost certain he’ll get similarly quick conditions in Tokyo.
But Auguste Rodin and his fellow challengers from Europe – Goliath for France and Fantastic Moon for Germany – face no easy task if the record of recent overseas runners in the Japan Cup is anything to go by.
Of the first 25 runnings of the Japan Cup which was first run in 1981, 14 were won by visitors. Irish mare Stanerra was the first to strike for Europe in 1983 and was soon followed by the Clive Brittain-trained Jupiter Island who became Britain’s first winner in 1986. France and Germany were successful with Le Glorieux in 1987 and Lando in 1995 respectively, before Sir Michael Stoute’s pair of winners Singspiel and Pilsudski in 1996 and 1997. Singspiel’s jockey Frankie Dettori was also successful in 2002 on Falbrav, then still trained in Italy before his move to Luca Cumani, before Cumani and Dettori teamed up to win the 2005 Japan Cup with Alkaased.
However, Alkaased’s victory by a nose almost twenty years ago marked a sudden end to overseas success in the Japan Cup. Foreign jockeys have won several renewals since for Japanese stables, including Auguste Rodin’s rider Ryan Moore, successful on Gentildonna in 2013 and Vela Azul in 2022, but in a clear demonstration of how much Japan has developed this century as a world power in bloodstock and racing, horses trained overseas haven’t had a look-in since then.
A year after Alkaased was successful, top-class four-year-old Deep Impact started the current monopoly of home-trained winners and then perpetuated it by siring the winners of four subsequent editions. Japan’s nine-time champion sire Deep Impact has been at the forefront of his nation’s emergence on the world stage. Coolmore were among those outside Japan to tap into Deep Impact’s success before he died in 2019 and there would be some irony if his son Auguste Rodin, who comes from Deep Impact’s final crop, were to be the horse who ends the drought for international raiders in the Japan Cup.
But perhaps an even more sobering statistic than the recent lack of overseas winners is that out of the 59 foreign-trained runners to have contested the Japan Cup since Alkaased was successful, just two have managed to reach the frame. The Ed Dunlop-trained mare Ouija Board, the former Oaks winner, was third to Deep Impact on her second attempt at the race in 2006 and, like Auguste Rodin, had won the Prince of Wales’s Stakes earlier that year. Sir Michael Stoute’s Conduit was fourth in 2009. He too was a former classic winner, successful in the St Leger and, like Auguste Rodin (and one of Stoute’s Japan Cup winners Pilsudski) was a Breeders’ Cup Turf winner, contesting his Japan Cup after winning the Turf for the second year running in a season when he’d also won the King George.
Auguste Rodin will be Aidan O’Brien’s first runner in the Japan Cup since 2021 when Japan and Broome finished eighth and eleventh respectively. O’Brien has had only six runners in the race with Idaho faring much the best of them, finishing fifth as a four-year-old in 2017 despite a slow start. Idaho’s only win that year came in the Hardwicke Stakes and he never won a Group 1, though he was placed in the Derby and Irish Derby the year before and was third in the King George at four.
Auguste Rodin has a much more impressive CV and he’ll be the first Derby winner this century to run in the Japan Cup. Three tried in the 1990s. In 1992, that year’s Derby winner Dr Devious contested the Japan Cup along with Quest For Fame, successful at Epsom two years earlier, though both finished down the field. High-Rise fared better, though, when third as a four-year-old for Saeed bin Suroor in 1999 having won the Derby for Luca Cumani the year before.
Auguste Rodin has a Timeform rating of 125 and came within a neck of winning his second Irish Champion Stakes last time out when going down to Economics at Leopardstown. But he’s not necessarily Europe’s best chance of success on Sunday. Francis-Henri Graffard’s much-improved four-year-old gelding Goliath, rated 128, has claims that are at least as strong.
Auguste Rodin didn’t give his true running when only fifth behind Goliath in the King George at Ascot in July but even at his best he’d have found Goliath very hard to beat on the day. Belying his odds of 25/1, Goliath was an impressive winner under Christophe Soumillon and the form could hardly have worked out better this autumn, with runner-up Bluestocking going on to win the Arc and the third, Rebel’s Romance, winning the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
Since then, Goliath has had a successful warm-up in Group 2 company in the mud at Longchamp last month but the King George remains his key piece of form as it showed he’s very well-suited by an end-to-end gallop on firmish ground, a scenario that’s almost certain to be repeated at Tokyo. Coupled with his high-class rating, Goliath looks the strongest Japan Cup contender from Europe for years. Soumillon, incidentally, has already won a Japan Cup on Epiphaneia ten years ago.
Because of the Group 1 races they’ve won this year, Goliath and Auguste Rodin are eligible for a $3m bonus on top of the substantial winner’s prize should either be successful. So too is Europe’s third contender Fantastic Moon trained in Munich by Sarah Steinberg. He finished strongly off a good pace to win the Grosser Preis von Baden in September, adding to his first Group 1 success in last year’s German Derby. Rather atypically for a German horse, his best efforts have come away from testing going and connections were considering taking him out of the Arc when the ground softened. He can be forgiven that run, but even on his very best form, a rating of 120 makes him the outsider of the European trio.
The good news for the European runners is that there is nothing of the calibre of last year’s outstanding winner Equinox among the home team in this year’s Japan Cup. The pair competing for favouritism according to the predicted odds in Japan are three-year-old filly Cervinia and five-year-old horse Do Deuce. Cervinia represents the same trainer-jockey combination as last year’s winner, Tetsuya Kimura and Christophe Lemaire who will be bidding to win his fifth Japan Cup.
Cervinia has won four of her six starts and followed up her win in the Japanese Oaks with victory in the autumn leg of the fillies’ triple crown, the Shuka Sho at Kyoto last month. But taking on older, male and overseas rivals demands a lot more from her than she’s shown so far. Do Deuce has far less to prove in this sort of company, with his rating of 125 on a par with Auguste Rodin’s. He finished in rear on soft ground in the 2022 Arc but has a far better record on firmer home turf. One of only two horses ever to beat Equinox (in the Japanese Derby), Do Deuce gained his latest Group 1 success in last month’s Tenno Sho (Autumn) when Yutaka Take produced him wide and late, looking as good as ever. Deep Impact’s jockey Take is also seeking to win his fifth Japan Cup, his first success in the race dating back to 1999.
Others to note are Justin Palace, a son of Deep Impact, who finished well for fourth behind Do Deuce last time and will be suited by this longer trip, and the mare Stars On Earth who did well to finish third behind Equinox from a wide draw last year. Two more of the field have run in Europe this year. The only three-year-old colt in the line-up, Shin Emperor, disappointed in the Arc last time but was less than a length behind Auguste Rodin when third in the Irish Champion Stakes. Last year’s Japanese St Leger winner Durezza was last seen finishing fifth behind City of Troy in the Juddmonte International so he’ll be among those at longer odds.
The Japan Cup takes place in Tokyo at 06:40GMT on Sunday
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