Japan An Ideal Environment For Harbinger

[Wandering Eyes]

The G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. is annually one of the sport’s most anticipated contests, and given its position as Britain’s third-richest race (behind the G1 Investec Derby and the G1 Qipco Champion S.) and its calendar spot where 3-year-olds and older horses can meet each other at the peaks of their powers, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Saturday’s renewal of Ascot’s midsummer showpiece could prove to be a vintage renewal, with Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}) aiming to become just the third dual winner of the 68-year old race. She would also be the first to win it in non-consecutive years; she bested Ulysses (GB) (Galileo {Ire}) by 4 1/2 lengths at three but sat out last year’s edition, won by Poet’s Word (GB) (Poet’s Voice {GB}), on account of a setback that caused her seasonal debut to be delayed until September.

While we wait to see if Enable can make history, it is worth reflecting on the accomplishments of another who did so in 2010. Harbinger (GB) (Dansili {GB}) went off the 4-1 second choice and was abandoned by Ryan Moore in favour of his stablemate, the Derby winner Workforce (GB) (King’s Best), but nonetheless decimated his five rivals under Olivier Peslier, winning by 11 lengths for Highclere’s Admiral Rous syndicate and trainer Sir Michael Stoute in a track-record time of 2:26.78. His 11-length gulf also bettered the race’s previous-best winning margin of seven lengths established by Generous in 1993. He was rated 140 by Timeform-joint sixth of all time in conjunction with Dancing Brave, Dubai Millennium, Sea The Stars, Shergar and Vaguely Noble. His King George was given a mark of 135 by the World Thoroughbred Rankings-good enough to be named the world’s best racehorse of 2010 by a wide margin over the 129-rated GI Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Blame (Arch).

Harbinger, sadly, was injured on the gallops just a few weeks later and never ran again. The competition to secure him for stud was understandably fierce, and despite what connections described at the time as a “very strong bid” to keep the horse in Britain, ultimately they couldn’t turn down an even stronger offer to sell to the Yoshida family’s Shadai Group, and in late 2010 Harbinger was on a plane to Hokkaido, Japan.

Harbinger stood this year, his eighth season, for ¥6-million (£44,407/€49,787). He covered 210 mares in 2018 and was one of seven Shadai stallions to break the 200 mark in addition to Lord Kanaloa (Jpn), Drefong, Duramente (Jpn), Maurice (Jpn), Rulership (Jpn) and Epiphaneia (Jpn).

Harbinger’s first crop (comprised of 148 foals) hit the track in 2014 and yielded 18 winners from 85 runners, good enough to be named champion first-season sire-a significant accomplishment considering Harbinger himself hadn’t started until mid-April of his 3-year-old year, but it is important to note that Japan’s entire racing program is very focused on older middle-distance and staying horses. Even the 2-year-old program is designed around nurturing future stars, with 2-year-old racing only beginning in early June. As with all ages, Japan has fewer 2-year-old group races, making them more competitive in nature: whereas Japan has 14 2-year-old group races to divide among an annual foal crop of around 7,000, Britain alone has 36 for 4,600 foals.

Harbinger notched his first stakes winner shortly after the turn of the calendar in 2015 when Beruf (Jpn) took the G3 Kiesei Hai S. over 2000 metres, and 2-year-old Dreadnoughtus (Jpn) won the G3 Nisai S. over the same distance (yes, a 2000 metre race for 2-year-olds) in late November, and Harbinger wound up the year with 72 individual winners.

Harbinger added an additional group and listed winner in 2016, and while he had plied his trade admirably throughout his first few seasons, it was in 2017 that his progeny really began to spring to life. He made headlines when remarkably recording three Group 1 winners in the span of a month, all 3-year-olds from his third crop: the G1 Shuka Sho (2000 metres) winner Deirdre (Jpn); the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup (2200 metres) scorer Mozu Katchan (Jpn) and Persian Knight (Jpn), winner of the G1 Mile Championship. The momentum rolled into 2018 when he produced a career-best tally of stakes winners (10, including five group winners) and earnings (around £20.7-million/€23.3-million). His headline horse last year was Blast Onepiece (Jpn), a 3-year-old who bested older horses in the 2500-metre G1 Arima Kinen. The Arima Kinen, held annually on the Sunday before Christmas, is the country’s biggest betting race, with the field decided in part by votes from fans who sometimes camp out for days in advance to get a good position among the 100,000-plus crowd at Nakayama Racecourse-despite the cold weather and the holiday season.

Harbinger is on three stakes winners thus far in 2019, headed by the G1 Victoria Mile winner Normcore (Jpn). He sits ninth on the sires’ table comprising turf and dirt earnings, and fifth by turf earnings only. He has averaged 3.4 stakes winners per crop.

Harbinger is playing an important role on the Shadai roster as an outcross that is also a source of class and stamina. It is well known that Deep Impact and other sons of Sunday Silence are very prominent at the top of the stallion ranks in Japan, and the two other obvious outcross sires to emerge in recent years, Lord Kanaloa (Jpn) and Rulership (Jpn), are both by the prolific King Kamehameha, who will also have plenty of daughters at stud. Two of Harbinger’s Group 1 winners, Mozu Katchan and Blast Onepiece, are out of King Kamehameha mares. Seven of his 17 stakes winners are out of Sunday Silence mares, including Persian Knight, and a further five are out of mares by sons of Sunday Silence, while Normcore and Group 3 winner Prophet (Jpn) have second dams by Sunday Silence.

“It is very important to have a successful pedigree which is an outcross to Sunday Silence line for the horse breeding industry in Japan,” said the JRHA’s international representative Naohiro Goda. “And as many of the important races in Japan are over a

mile and quarter, a mile and half and more, Harbinger is an ideal stallion for Japanese breeders.”

Japan’s gain appears to have been Europe’s loss when it comes to Harbinger’s stud career, but it is worth questioning whether he would have gotten the same chance to shine on his home soil. While his record-breaking King George win would have surely gained him some early support at stud, the fact that he didn’t race at two and didn’t reach his best until four would have turned plenty off in the land where a precocious page has become so crucial in the sales ring. Just look at horses like Decorated Knight (GB) and Harzand (Ire) in recent years. Sure, neither were rated 135, but both were incredibly admirable multiple Group 1 winners over middle distances, and both have struggled to attract decent book sizes: Decorated Knight received 66 mares last year and Harzand, after covering 87 in his first season, was visited by just 30 mares in 2018. And while we cannot say that Harbinger wouldn’t have had a 2-year-old stakes winner had he stood in Europe, hypothetically a first year of runners in Europe without one would have been extremely difficult to bounce back from.

Harbinger has found a place at Shadai where he can successfully ply his trade, and we can now watch on with interest to see whether he develops into one of the next great imports. And with the Japanese-trained Cheval Grand (Jpn) (Heart’s Cry {Jpn}) lining up in hopes to dethrone Enable on Saturday-and with Harbinger’s own Deirdre having run in Royal Ascot’s G1 Prince of Wales’s S.-one has cause to believe that we could still see one of Harbinger’s own sons or daughters someday line up in the race in which he made such a mark.

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