Part 2 of our special on the late, lamented sire whose crowning achievement came with Auguste Rodin’s Epsom Derby triumph
It is over a decade since the first of the Deep Impacts landed in Europe. History tends to emphasise the era of Saxon Warrior and Study Of Man when it comes to his global reach but I remember the anticipation that surrounded those first runners.
Although small in numbers, they were rich in quality thanks to the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches winner Beauty Parlour and high-class French stakes winners Aquamarine and Barrocci.
Shipping horses in and out of Japan is not for the faint-hearted of breeders, requiring deep pockets and meticulous planning, but such was Deep Impact’s immediate success at Shadai that his name quickly became one that no breeding operation with international aspirations could live without.
Array of Classic winners
Deep Impact became to Japan was Galileo was to Europe. He has been Japan’s champion sire every year from 2012 to 2022 and is the sire of 59 G1 winners, among them an array of Japanese Classic winners alongside the European stars Saxon Warrior and Snowfall.
Part 1: ‘You shouldn’t really fall in love with a horse’ – Nicholas Godfrey with memories of Deep Impact
Perhaps, however, the best has been saved for last in Auguste Rodin, who placed an exclamation point on Coolmore’s use of the stallion with an authoritative success in Saturday’s Derby at Epsom.
What makes the emergence of an Epsom Derby winner out of Deep Impact’s last crop all the more remarkable is the fact that it has been achieved through a mere handful of representatives. Deep Impact covered only 24 mares in 2019 due to a serious neck issue that was to ultimately claim his life aged 17 later in the summer.
The Coolmore partners, as it turned out, were among the luckier breeders to use him that year since their G1 winners Maybe, Minding and Hydrangea joined Auguste Rodin’s dam Rhododendron in conceiving to the stallion. That gave them four final-crop representatives, a group that also includes recent G2 Gallinule Stakes winner Drumroll, the colt out of Maybe.
Auguste Rodin a cut above
But listen to any chatter out of Ballydoyle and the notion has always been that Auguste Rodin is a cut above. Indeed, in the Derby aftermath, O’Brien was quick to outline just how ‘unique’ his ninth Derby winner is in terms of that potent mix of breeding and ability.
“What Deep Impact has done in Japan has been incredible,” he explained on Luck On Sunday on Racing TV. “Anything we’ve ever had to do with Deep Impact has been extraordinary. The ability they have, the way they travel, the distance they’re able to get over. They have unbelievable minds, they’re very sound, easy horses to train.
“We all know what Galileo was and what Rhododendron’s family was. I remember John [Magnier] saying to us that Auguste Rodin was probably the most important horse to ever come here. When he started working, everything came so easy, he passed every test with flying colours. Everything about him is just extraordinary.”
Of course, Deep Impact is a chapter, albeit a major one, in the story of Sunday Silence, to whom Auguste Rodin bears a striking physical resemblance.
Famously unsold for $17,000 as a yearling and $32,000 as a two-year-old prior to flirting with death when caught up in a serious truck crash, Sunday Silence proceeded to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Classic for Arthur Hancock and Charlie Whittingham during a season in 1989 lit up by his West-East Coast rivalry with Easy Goer.
Yet when the time came for Hancock to retire the son of Halo to his Stone Farm, there were few takers in the tall, lanky colt with an unfashionable female line. By contrast, Easy Goer was booked full at Claiborne Farm. Thus with Shadai’s Teruya Yoshida, already a part-owner in the horse, offering $250,000 per share, a deal was struck to sell Sunday Silence to Japan.
Japanese closed shop
Japan had been more or less a closed shop when it came to racehorse breeding. Sunday Silence helped to change that, becoming key to its development as a respected racing nation. And as he became more successful, various international operations began tapping into his line; for instance, Sheikh Mohammed bred the 2001 Cherry Hinton Stakes winner Silent Honor by him and raced the Classic-placed Sundrop, a Japanese foal purchase, while the Wertheimer brothers campaign the Sunday Silence colt Silent Name to G2 success.
Deep Impact arrived posthumously for Sunday Silence as a member of his penultimate crop. Out of Wind In Her Hair, an Alzao relation to Height Of Fashion who ran Balanchine close in the 1994 Oaks, he was by far the best of all Sunday Silence’s champions and was also his most popular, attaining iconic status with his sweep of the 2005 Japanese Triple Crown chief among his 12 victories.
His sheer brilliance, emphasised by a ruthless ability to cut down his rivals, and versatility, underlined by G1 wins ranging from ten furlongs to two miles, made him one of the most exciting horses to retire to stud in 2007.
Understandably, he was very much the domain of Japanese breeders but international interest even then was bubbling, driven in part by Sunday Silence having already opened various international doors and Deep Impact’s fine run to be third in the Arc in front of an international audience.
The Wildenstein family were among the first to set those wheels in motion and were duly rewarded as the breeders of French Classic winner Beauty Parlour, G3 winner Aquamarine and Listed scorer Barrocci.
Andrew Black’s Chasemore Farm, meanwhile, targeted the 2008 JRHA Foal Sale, where he paid ¥33,000,000 through Blandford Bloodstock for a first-crop filly out of Lhiz, later named Sunday Bess.
It was soon apparent that such interest wasn’t misplaced. Deep Impact’s first crop contained the Oka Sho (Japanese 1000 Guineas) winner Marcellina, two winners of the G1 Kyoto Mile Championship in Danon Shark and Tosen Ra as well as Real Impact, a G1 winner in Japan and Australia.
Seven Japanese Derby winners
Then out of his second emerged Horse of the Year Gentildonna, the winner of seven G1 races including two Japan Cups, champion 2yo filly Joie De Vivre, Deep Brillante, the first of seven Japanese Derby (Tokyo Yushun) winners for the sire, and Beauty Parlour.
In the years since then, Deep Impact has done it all. Kizuna, Makahiki, Wagnerian, Roger Barows, Contrail and Shahryar have joined Deep Brillante as Japanese Derby winners. Contrail, who swept the Japanese Triple Crown in 2020, is one of three Japanese 2000 Guineas (Satsuki Sho) winners for the sire while there have also been five winners of the Japanese 1000 Guineas and four winners of the Japanese Oaks (Yushun Himba).
Internationally speaking, Fierce Impact, Profundo, Real Impact and Tosen Stardom have struck at the top level in Australasia while Gentildonna, Shahryar, Vivlos and Real Steel are G1 winners in Dubai.
Globetrotters Loves Only You and A Shin Hikari have also advertised the breed to good effect, with Loves Only You travelling to California to capture the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf in 2021 and A Shin Hikari’s wide-reaching career taking in G1 victories in the Prix d’Ispahan and Hong Kong Mile. More recently, Glory Vase captured back-to-back renewals of the Hong Kong Vase.
Europe's racing scene, of course, has also benefitted greatly. In 2013, the year following Beauty Parlour’s Classic breakthrough, Coolmore sent its first batch of mares over to Japan. They included G1-winning 2yo Maybe, whose first Deep Impact foal, the Listed-placed Pavlenko, was followed by Saxon Warrior, handled by O’Brien to win the G1 Vertem Futurity as a 2yo before his Guineas success.. He arrived in the same small Coolmore-bred crop as September, a daughter of G1 winner Peeping Fawn who ran a nose second in the G1 Fillies’ Mile.
Two crops later, the outfit was further rewarded through the G1 Prix de Diane heroine Fancy Blue and again the following season when another daughter Snowfall carried all before her within the 3yo fillies’ division with dominant G1 victories in the Epsom, Irish and Yorkshire Oaks.
As for the Niarchos family, supporters of the Japanese industry since the days their Classic winner Hector Protector was based at Shadai, they bred the 2018 Prix du Jockey Club winner Study Of Man and 2021 G3 Prix Cleopatre winner Harajaku.
Ability and resilience
There have been other successful Japanese stallions, including King Kamehameha and Heart’s Cry in recent years, who have forged reputations outside of Japan – but the weight of driving the country forward as a serious international racing nation has rested primarily upon Deep Impact. Quite often, it is the headline acts among his progeny that spring to mind on the occasions when the ability and resilience of the Japanese Thoroughbred is celebrated.
The next chapter is how his legacy will evolve as a sire of sires. He has sons stationed all over the world but Shadai unsurprisingly holds the aces as home to his most accomplished stallion son in Kizuna, sire of Songline, and the unproven Contrail, who commands ¥12,000,000 (approximately $85,000/£70,000).
As with any dominant stallion, there has been some disappointments – Deep Brillante and A Shin Hikari have been slow starters – but there have also been some pleasant surprises, notably Silver State, who sired the Classic-placed Water Navillera out of his first inexpensively-bred crop.
Perhaps not helping the cause is the fact that Hokkaido is home to so many high-class sons, all of whom are jostling for attention in a nation where around 70 per cent of the broodmare population carry Sunday Silence blood.
Saxon Warrior and Study Of Man, as potential outcrosses to the European mare population, do not have that problem. And so far the signs are encouraging, with Saxon Warrior’s first crop highlighted by the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Victoria Road to make him one of the most popular stallions at Coolmore.
Lanwades Stud’s Study Of Man is already off the mark with his first runners – the winner in question, Leopardstown debut scorer Deepone, looks very exciting. In the meantime, Ireland has gained another G1-winning son in the Zenith Stallion Station’s Tosen Stardom.
Several of the southern hemisphere shuttlers have also fared well, particularly Satono Aladdin, the sire of this year’s G1 Australian Oaks winner Pennyweka from his New Zealand base of Rich Hill Stud.
In today’s world, the Deep Impact sire line offers something of an outcross to those outside of Japan, and a welcome one at that.
And much like Galileo, his influence is associated with a toughness of limb and mind, both positive attributes in an evolving Thoroughbred. His story is far from over and in that, Auguste Rodin has a powerful role to play.
• Visit the Japan Racing Association website and the Epsom Derby website
Part 1: ‘You shouldn’t really fall in love with a horse’ – Nicholas Godfrey with memories of Deep Impact
How Frankel overcame the burden of expectation to become world #1 sire – Nancy Sexton appreciation
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