Asian Racing Conference: Reflections

SAPPORO, Japan — “It's been a hard day's night,” sang Masayuki Goto, vice-chairman of the Asian Racing Federation (ARF), as he took to the stage for his keynote speech during the closing exchanges of the 4oth Asian Racing Conference (ARC). And it is plain that Goto, the former president and CEO of the Japan Racing Association (JRA), and his fellow ARF committee members are looking forward to the day when their counterparts around the world are singing along in perfect harmony, perhaps to the tune of Here Comes The Sun.

Those bred for stamina, who sat through all nine sessions across the three days, will hopefully have found plenty on which to cogitate on the flight home from Sapporo, whether betting or breeding, fan engagement or finance is at the top of your wish list for racing.

The overriding theme was of the need for unity – both globally and locally. That is of course easier to achieve in countries such as Japan and Hong Kong, where the financial health of racing through strong tote monopolies enables areas in need of improvement to be addressed more readily.

Stakeholders within their fellow major racing nations of Australia and Britain are often at loggerheads internally over a range of issues. To a degree, Britain is seen as the fading aristocrat of world racing: sure, it has the heritage, the history and the titles, but the castle roof is leaking and there aren't enough buckets to go round.

It is not entirely fair to continue to portray British racing in this manner. At the top end at least, the combined efforts to push the available prize-money upwards through Premier Racing, the expansions of its marquee days in the World Pool, and roll out of a valuable maiden programme backed by some of the biggest breeders in the business, along with Tattersalls and the British EBF, it increasingly holds its own against its nearest neighbours of Ireland and France. In some instances, it outstrips them.

Is it too easy to make Britain the whipping boy? Maybe. But it doesn't help itself either, and an exodus of top executives over the coming months will naturally lead to some instability in the handover periods.

That was a side issue this week, as Britain, Ireland, France and Germany are not of course ARF members despite being strongly represented in Japan. “It's really a global racing conference,” said Ascot's Nick Smith as he joined a lengthy debate on all matters betting, and he has a point. BHA chair Joe Saumarez Smith, HRI chief executive Suzanne Eade, Henri Pouret and Elie Hannau of France Galop, and Deutscher Galopp manager Daniel Kruger were all in Sapporo to forge important alliances with their neighbours in the Asia and the Middle East.

Riyadh Takes up the Baton

At the closing ceremony, just before The Beatles tribute band The Parrots bounced on stage and were commanded to play at least four encores, Prince Bandar bin Khalid Al Faisal, chairman of the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCSA), was handed ARF banner by chairman Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges in anticipation of the next ARC. That is to be held in two years' time in Riyadh.

It may be one of the newest ARF members but Saudi has certainly made its presence felt in the Thoroughbred business in recent times, with the introduction of the world's richest race, the Saudi Cup, in 2020 and a doubling of the number of races staged in the country in the intervening years. Winners from America, Britain, Japan and Saudi itself have given the Saudi Cup a truly international feel and Group 1 status. With the country's racing programme expanding in leaps and bounds, and millions being spent on recruiting runners to fill those races, all eyes will be on how the Saudi racing scene continues to develop. It was encouraging to see representatives from the JCSA at the IFAR conference on Tuesday for every racing jurisdiction, especially one with growing might, must make proper aftercare provisions for those horses retiring from racing. 

There was barely a presentation during the week that did not make reference to this subject. It was interesting to note that the Hong Kong Jockey Club ensures that each new owner sets aside an 'equine pension fund', which is a mandatory sum of HK$100,000 (approximately €11,500) in order to finance the transition of horses in their retirement from racing to a new role.

Pattern vs Prize-Money

It shouldn't really be a case of either/or but that was the suggestion made by Widden Stud's Antony Thompson, who, as a guest on an international breeding panel, gave a positive overview of the robustness of the Australian racing industry, reminding those listening that the country hosts a million-dollar-plus race every week on average.

“Nick Smith said yesterday that the Pattern is cornerstone of the British racing system. We'd say prize-money is the cornerstone of the Australian racing system,” he explained.

The combining of those two objectives would be the ideal situation and, clearly, many involved in the Australian industry consider the returns on offer in Britain to be derisory. But it is concerning that the Australian Pattern Committee has not held a meeting for some years – a situation that Arrowfield's John Messara is at the forefront of trying to resolve in order to keep Australia's group races under regular review.

Britain does not act unilaterally when it comes to its Pattern races and liaises closely with its European neighbours in establishing a progression of races both through the distances and throughout the season. And with that in mind, it is worth heeding the words of Shadai Farm's owner Teruya Yoshida in an interview in TDN last year.

“We are looking for good horses from anywhere in the world and buying the good-quality mares from Europe is very important,” he said. “European classification of the racing is very correct. If we buy Group 2 or Group 3 mares in Europe, that is their true level. In some other countries we can't believe in it, but if we buy them in Europe we know that they are good-class horses.”

Rise of the Sons

Prior to the international breeding panel came one focused solely on the Japanese industry and featuring Tetsuya and Shunsuke Yoshida along with Hirokazu Okada, the sons respectively of Teruya and Katsumi Yoshida of Shadai and Northern Farms, and Shigeyuki Okada of Big Red Farm. The succession plan appears strong in Japanese breeding. 

Of the 7,796 foals born in Japan in 2023, 98% of those were on farms in the Iburi and Hidaka regions of Hokkaido, not far from where the conference was taking place. A good percentage of those are the offspring of mares recruited internationally, primarily but not only by the Yoshida family, with Japanese breeders often putting a premium on racecourse form.

The most recent luminary of that breeding programme was the horse deemed to be the world's best racehorse of 2023, Equinox (Jpn), whose rapturous finale in the Japan Cup in turn lifted that race to be rated best in the world last year. It was a twin triumph for Japan as the JRA commenced celebrations of its 70th anniversary. 

Asked to explain the extraordinary rise in success of Japanese horses on the world stage, Shunsuke Yoshida, vice-president of Northern Farm, replied simply, “I think we paid attention.”

Having learned from the established top nations in the business in Europe, the Americas and Australasia, Japan in now teaching all of them a lesson. The cycle of life for a racehorse, from conception through rearing, breaking, training, racing and retirement, is properly funded at every step of the way and, crucially, is well explained to the racing public, including on posters around racecourses. 

Whatever one's specific interest in racing, it never hurts to be helped to join up the dots and understand just what it takes to get that gleaming Thoroughbred to its peak condition on race days. In turn, those fans betting through the JRA facilities at the racecourses, are doing their bit in putting money back into breeding and prize-money. What goes around comes around.

Okada, president of Big Red Farm, which has been in operation since 1982 and stands Benbatl (GB) and Gold Ship (Jpn) among other stallions, explained, “Up until 2010 the yearling sales turnover and production was declining but it has improved since then. Horseracing anime [a mobile game-turned-popular TV series] has really expanded the knowledge of the sport. Young business people are becoming owners. Star jockeys like Yutaka Take led the second Japanese racing boom and with Japanese horses becoming very successful overseas, these owners recognise that racing is popular internationally.”

Enhancing fan engagement and recruiting more young fans to the sport was another theme that loomed large in the various presentations throughout the week in Sapporo. Even this 55-year-old big kid could not resist the lure of the plushie stall in the Turfy Shop at Sapporo racecourse on Saturday. A fluffy replica of Nassau Stakes heroine Deirdre (Jpn) is on the way home to Newmarket. 

Effective Communication

One of the most engaging speeches of the week came from Vicky Leonard, owner of the marketing agency Kick Collective and the Australasian daily publication The Thoroughbred Report, which, in the interests of transparency, is a sister publication of TDN. 

Plenty at the conference took notice of Leonard's compelling talk which impressed upon the delegates the need to have the relevant facts to hand to help combat the sport's detractors. She has been practising what she preaches with the launch in 2o22 of the website and campaign Kick Up For Racing, which is a fact-based resource to correct falsehoods so easily spread about racing on social media and beyond.

“If an industry isn't talking it is assumed it has something to hide,” she said, divulging that the most read article on the website is What happens to the slow horses? 

Again, this links back to an obvious public concern with regard to the second part of a racehorse's life. The growing drive to have visible and proactive aftercare programmes around the world of racing is clearly necessary for what Engelbrecht-Bresges referred to in his opening speech as “social acceptability”. 

By No Means Least…

Lastly, all of those who attended the 40th ARC are in the debt of the unfaltering courtesy and helpfulness of those many people from the JRA and ARF charged with making sure the many attendees got the right bus to the right place at the right time, and ensured the slickest of presentations akin to a night at the Oscars. Arigato gozaimasu.