The Tokyo Yushun is not only the richest Derby in the world but also ranks among the very best. The contest brings together the cream of Japan’s colts and on occasion an exceptional filly, such as Vodka who, in 2007, was the first of her sex to win the race.
2006 Derby hero Deep Impact, seen here winning the 2007 Japan Cup, went on to become Japan’s greatest ever horse.
The Tokyo Yushun was first run in 1932 and was opened to foreign-bred horses in 2001. In 2010, when JRA races attained international ‘blue book’ status, the race was opened to horses trained outside of Japan.
Eight Derby winners have gone on to complete the Triple Crown and three of those horses have achieved the feat this century: the great champion Deep Impact, the mercurial yet brilliant Orfevre, and Deep Impact’s son Contrail.
Featured winner: Deep Impact
The great Deep Impact won the 2005 running of the Tokyo Yushun by a dominant five lengths under Yutaka Take on his way to winning the Triple Crown. The Yasuo Ikee-trained son of Sunday Silence won his first seven races but closed out his classic season with a first defeat when he failed to reel back the year-older Heart’s Cry in the Grade 1 Arima Kinen.
Deep Impact returned in imperious form as a four-year-old with Grade 1 wins in the Tenno Sho (Spring), Takarazuka Kinen, Japan Cup and Arima Kinen, with his only failure being his narrow third-past-the-post Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe effort, for which he was later disqualified due to a positive sample.
He retired with 12 wins from 14 starts and his remarkable achievements continued at Shadai Stallion Station where he became one of the world’s greatest sires of the modern era before his death at age 17 in 2019.
