STAY Gold was a high-class winner in his native Japan, but his biggest successes came outside that country. Twenty-one years ago he captured the Group 1 Hong Kong Vase at Sha Tin and the then Group 2 Sheema Classic at Nad Al Sheba.

He won seven races but was placed an incredible 20 times, often in the best of company, and he went to stud 20 years ago with winnings of £5.5 million. Stay Gold was at stud for 14 seasons and sired 10 Group 1 winners, 39 pattern winners and these were among a total of 56 blacktype winners.

His penultimate crop included Stay Foolish, and that seven-year-old denied the Irish-trained Sonnyboyliston victory in the Group 3 Red Sea Turf Handicap last weekend, the most valuable contest apart from the Group 1 Saudi Cup. It was worth $2.5 million and the Japanese-trained winner was one of a quartet on the card for horses bred and trained in the country. All four were ridden by Christophe Lemaire.

The success being enjoyed by Japanese-bred and trained runners is growing apace, and the most recent meetings at the Breeders’ Cup and in Hong Kong indicate that this will become more of a norm in time. The one race we do know that they covet above all others is the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, and Stay Gold’s son Orfevre, the Japanese Triple Crown hero and six-time Group 1 winner, was twice runner-up in Paris.

Coincidentally, Orfevre sired the Group 3 Neom Turf Cup winner Authority at the recent Saudi meeting run at King Abdulaziz racecourse.

Richness

Stay Foolish was bred at Shadai Farm and this was just his third win on his 30th career outing, and his first since the Group 2 Kyoto Shimbun Hai in 2018. His only other was the previous December as a two-year-old.

Nonetheless, given the richness of the programme in Japan he has earned more than £2.4 million now, and his many placed efforts came at up to Group 1 level.

Stay Foolish is one of the first seven foals, all winners, from the stakes-winning miler Hauai Lane (King Kamehameha), and the most recent of this septet was last year’s juvenile scorer La Ruelle (Deep Impact). Connections are hoping that the seven-year-old entire will stay well and be aimed at the year’s end for the Group 1 Melbourne Cup.

Hauai Lane has a two-year-old filly now by Just A Way (Heart’s Cry) and a yearling filly by Kizuna (Deep Impact). She is a daughter of Silver Lane (Silver Hawk), a Group 3 winner in France who was third in the Group 1 Kildangan Stud Irish Oaks.

Silver Lane was sold as an eight-year-old 29 years ago at Keeneland for $750,000 and joined the Lloyd Webber’s Watership Down Stud and they later sent her to Japan.

Shakespeare

Silver Lane bred four stakes winners from five winners, three of them successful in Japan. The odd-one-out was Shakespeare (Rainbow Quest), a 2,200,000gns yearling purchase who was a listed winner in Ireland and later won in Hong Kong. He won £200,000 while racing. Silver Lane was an own-sister to triple Grade 1 winner Hawkster (Silver Hawk), later a successful sire.

A more recent racing star from this immediate family was Obviously (Choisir). She and Stay Foolish share the same third dam. Once sold for €2,000 as a yearling, Obviously won 13 races and $2.3 million and they included the Group 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint and two editions of the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile. She also set a new course record for a mile at Del Mar.

The Group 3 Neom Turf Cup winner Authority was bred by Northern Farm and this lightly-raced five-year-old son of Orfevre (Stay Gold) was winning for the sixth time, adding to a trio of Group 2 victories in Japan. He was runner-up last year to the great Contrail in the Group 1 Japan Cup, his last outing before the weekend.

Curriculum vitae

All that is missing now from Authority’s curriculum vitae is a Group 1 win, and this is nothing more than his breeding would entitle him to. He is the best of his dam’s first three foals, two of which are winners. That mare, Rosalind (Symboli Kris S), was placed and she is an own-sister to a racing star who has made an impressive start at stud.

Epiphaneia (Symboli Kris S) won the Group 1 Japan Cup and the Group 1 Japanese St Leger, and was runner-up in both the other legs of the Triple Crown. His first three crops at stud have done exceptionally well, his best runner to date being Daring Tact, the fillies’ Triple Tiara winner. Rosalind and Epiphaneia are both out of the champion Cesario (Special Week).

Cesario won the Group 1 Japanese Oaks and she travelled stateside to add the Grade 1 American Oaks to her tally of five wins. Rosalind was born the year after Epiphaneia, but there was still more to come. Leontes (King Kamehameha) was champion at two in Japan, while four years later his half-brother Saturnalia (Lord Kanaloa) was the champion three-year-old, his pair of Group 1 wins including the Japanese 2000 Guineas.

Familiar territory

Go one generation further back and you are in familiar pedigree territory. Cesario’s dam Kirov Premiere (Sadler’s Wells) was a Grade 3 winner in the USA, and she is one of 10 winners, three of them blacktype winners, from Querida (Habitat). That half-sister to Chief Singer (Ballad Rock), winner of the Group 1 July Cup, is ancestress of Fascinating Rock (Fastnet Rock).

With winnings of $19 million, Orfevre is the second richest racehorse in history, and his sixth crop are two-year-olds. His best runners are the 2021 Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner Marche Lorraine, four-time Japanese Group 1 winner Lucky Lilac, and the Group 1 Japanese 2000 Guineas winner Epoca D’Oro.