IN last week’s column I wrote about the success of Deep Impact and his influence on the breeding industry in Japan and globally. Seven days later and I have occasion to write about his full-brother Black Tide, sire of the recent Group 1 Japan Cup winner Kitasan Black.

Unraced at two, Kitasan Black, a son of Sunday Silence, has been a model of consistency over the last two years and his latest top-level victory is his third in Group 1 company. Last year he landed the Japanese St Leger and was placed in their 2000 Guineas. This year he has added the Group 1 Tenno Sho Spring to his tally of victories and he has only been out of the first three once in 13 starts. Kitasan Black has done something his sire failed to do – win at Group 1 level.

Black Tide won three times in Japan, the best of his wins coming in the Listed Sho Spring Stakes, a race that is rated Group 2 locally. He was born a year before his more famous own-brother and one of their half-sisters bred the successful Irish National Stud and Garryrichard Stud stallion Jeremy.

Black Tide now has five crops of racing age and the same number of stakes winners. Kitasan Black is the only one of them to win or place in a Group 1, while T M Inazuma and Tagano Espresso are Group 2 winners. His crops have averaged almost 90 foals each, so his strike rate for stakes performers must be considered disappointing.

On his dam’s side Kitasan Black is the best horse to appear in the family for three generations; indeed, you have to go all the way back to his fourth dam Tizna to find the next stakes winner. Tizna herself was a Grade 1 winner in the USA after she came to race there from Chile. She won the Santa Margarita Invitational Handicap twice and the Ladies Handicap, and she retired to the breeding shed with a total of 18 wins under her belt.

Tizna bred just three minor winners, in spite of visiting such luminaries as Northern Dancer, Lyphard, Secretariat and Mr Prospector. None of her runners managed any blacktype, but two of her daughters bred minor stakes winners. Another daughter was the four-time winner Tizly, the third dam of Kitasan Black, who achieved that winning feat from just six starts and she bred eight winners.

In America Tizly bred the Grade 1 Super Derby placed Cee’s Tizzy (by Relaunch) who went on to sire the dual Breeders’ Cup winner and sire Tiznow, while the best of her seven winners in Japan was the Sunday Silence filly Otomeno Inori who was stakes-placed.

Another daughter Otome Gokoro (by Judge Angelucci) won four races but she bred just a single winner, while her unraced Sakura Bakushin O daughter Sugar Heart is the unraced dam of Kitasan Black. Kitasan Black is one of a trio of winners for her dam, the best of the others being the Stay Gold colt Shonan Bach, a six-time winner to 2015 and placed in the Group 2 American Jockey Club Cup.