BRINGING ASIAN RACING TO THE WORLD
Masayoshi Ebina may have found a Group 1 horse in effortless Tokyo winner Red Mon Reve, while Naosuke Sugai's patient approach with Carro Veloce paid off at Chukyo.
Red Mon Reve is building a solid record at a mile and the four-year-old could be one to watch when the G1 Yasuda Kinen rolls around midway through the year.
Third year trainer Masayoshi Ebina, the former jockey best known for riding El Condor Pasa, won the Yasuda Kinen aboard Air Jihad in 1999.
Champion jockey Yuga Kawada believes Ebina might have his first star in the form of Red Mon Reve, a son of Lord Kanaloa, himself a Yasuda Kinen winner in 2013.
“I have high expectation to this horse,” Kawada said after the dominant Class 3 display.
In an entertaining interview with Asian Racing Report last year, in which trainer Naosuke Sugai compared his superstar horses to musicians (Gold Ship/rock star, Just A Way/folk singer, Sodashi/pop starlet) and cast himself as a producer, he also used a musical analogy to describe his handling of two-year-olds: “my philosophy with two-year-olds is ‘why make a one-hit wonder, when you can have a seasoned star for years to come?”
The horse he was specifically referring to was colt Carro Veloce, who he was resting at the time due to shin soreness. The patience paid off on Saturday when Carro Veloce returned with a dominant all-the-way victory under Yuichi Fukunaga at Chukyo.
“He has great speed and is easy to control,” Fukunaga said. “He is proactive during racing. I think he will be suitable to races at a mile.”
The rockstar, the singer-songwriter and the pop princess: Naosuke Sugai – Japan’s super producer
