DEEP Impact son of Sunday Silence has enjoyed a near perfect 2016 domestically especially with his three-year-old crop. He was denied, by just a nose, from siring all six classic winners. He recorded the first three home in both the Tokyo Yushun (Japanese Derby) and the Satsuki Sho (Japanese 2000 Guineas). Six of the top 10 finishers were also by Deep Impact in the Satsuki Sho.

The whitewash was spoiled only by Vivlos in the Shuka Sho (final leg of The Fillies Triple Crown) winning by a nostril from Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) winner, Sinhalite.

Standing for the princely sum of 30,000,000 Yen (€245,000) in 2016, he is all but time away from becoming the leading sire in Japan for the fifth consecutive year. Holding an almost €21,000,000 earnings buffer over King Kamehameha in second place.

Providing nine individual Group 1 winners in 2016, Deep Impact only has Galileo ahead of him as the worldwide leading producer of top-tier winners.

Despite the now almost routine successes of the Triple Crown winner’s progeny, Mikki Isle’s success in the Mile Championship in November marked the first son of Deep Impact to become a dual domestic Group 1 winner.

Deep Impact’s son Satono Ares won the big two-year-old race at the end of the year, the Grade 1 Asahi Hai Futurity Stakes

Lemaire takes jockeys’ championship

HIS success aboard Soul Stirring at Hanshin racecourse on December 11th, recording a six-timer, it meant that Christophe Lemaire overtook champion Keita Tosaki at the head of the riders’ table.

Lemaire has lived a spectacular season, currently sitting on 177 (534 total JRA career wins) winners and boasts a 50.5% strike-rate of rides to top-three finishes, including three Group 1 wins, five Group 2s and two Group 3s and total accrued prize money of over €28,000,000.

Alongside fellow foreign rider Mirco Demuro, Lemaire was granted a full-time JRA licence at the start of 2015. They essentially became the first non-Japanese riders to be licenced on par with their Japanese counterparts. The French-born rider’s JRA career hit rough water in February of 2015. He was found guilty of posting on social media while under ‘jockey lockdown’.

JRA rules forbid contact by jockeys with the outside world on racing weekends when declared to ride. Lemaire received an excessive 30-day ban for what was a post expressing his sympathy for a weigh-room colleague that had passed away.