Meet woman who brings 7 horses from Japan to Breeders' Cup

If there was a wow statistic from Wednesday’s pre-entries for the Breeders’ Cup, it was 56. That was the record number of horses from outside the U.S. among the 196 would-be starters Nov. 5 and 6 at Del Mar.

Most of them come from Europe, but this year Japan has sent seven horses to the championships. With only 13 previous starters since the first one came over in 1996, that is easily the biggest group to represent that nation in Breeders’ Cup history.

HORSES FROM JAPAN IN BREEDERS’ CUP

“The reputation of the Breeders’ Cup itself is the draw,” said Kate Hunter, who is the championships’ liaison in Japan. “The West Coast is a much easier trip from Japan. Add in Japanese success in California like Cesario back at Hollywood (winning the Grade 1 American Oaks in 2005) and Nuovo Record in (the Grade 3 Red Carpet Handicap) back in 2016. California seems like a place they think they can thrive.”

With Group 1 wins in Japan and Hong Kong, Loves Only You looks like the most serious contender among the seven. She will race in either the $2 million Filly & Mare Turf or the $4 million Turf on Nov. 6.

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But back to why 2021, with COVID still putting up a fight, is the year when so many horses have been brought over from Japan. Sure, there is the $28 million in total purse money for the Breeders’ Cup, but that has always been there. A Lasix-free weekend has taken away the perception that the races are unfairly tilted in favor of the U.S., so there is that new lure.

“The Breeders’ Cup has been reaching out to Japan,” said Tom Robbins, chairman of the championships’ racing directors and secretaries. “It’s nice to see horses competing both on dirt and turf, so we’re thrilled with that.”

Eventually, the spotlight falls on Hunter, 38, a native of Nashville, Tenn., who moved to Japan 13 years ago to work in the racing industry. She joined the Breeders’ Cup five years ago to recruit horses to go across the Pacific every fall. Now she is regarded as a tireless ambassador who is not above attending to the smallest and least glamorous details to make the trip to America that much easier for her clients in Japan.

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“I try to be anything and everything they might possibly need leading up to a trip abroad and until everyone gets home,” she said Wednesday night from San Diego, where she accompanied some of the horses and their connections. “I am physically here to help with everything from visas to travel bookings, mucking, carpentry, ordering from menus and even laundry. They are kind of like friends and family.”

Throw media representative and occasional handicapper into the mix, too. Hunter has become such a valued member of the Japan racing family that trainer Hideyuki Mori could joke about her importance during France Go de Ina’s trip to the Preakness last spring.

“If anything gets screwed up, it’s going to be her fault,” Mori said at Pimlico – with Hunter translating.

How it began

The red tape involved in getting international horses into America can be a turn-off in and of itself – and that was long before COVID. The International Racing Bureau, based in London, found that itch waiting to be scratched when it was created about a half-century ago by British journalist David Hedges. Since the Breeders’ Cup began in 1984, it has been an especially vital link between international connections and the U.S.

Enter Hunter. After starting in Japan as a media free-lancer and working for some high-profile stables, she soon realized there was room for improvement when it came to helping horsemen and horses travel to America.

“The IRB has had a very successful presence in Japan, though they have focused on Europe and the Middle East,” Hunter said. “For Japanese going to the U.S., I’ve rather cornered the market. Unlike IRB, I’m a one-trick pony. I help Japan go abroad. They help way more countries. So while my job description is similar, my focus is very narrow.”

If there is one challenge that Hunter has been able to uniquely meet, it is crossing the language barrier. Fluent in both English and Japanese, Hunter makes the shift from one language to another smoother than Loves Only You finds another gear in the homestretch to close from mid-pack.

“The language barrier was a major issue,” she said. “There are so many things we English speakers take for granted.”

Trail-blazing trainer

Mori knows all about the American racing minefield. Now 63, he brought Ski Captain to America to the 1995 Kentucky Derby. That 14th-place finish marked the first time a Japan-based horse competed in a Triple Crown race. The visit came complete with an 11th-hour ruling from a federal judge who allowed the Kentucky-bred colt to race at Churchill Downs in spite of an international ownership dispute.

“That experience taught me what to bring over and how the trip goes,” Mori said in May. “I learned how to prepare the horse for the trip.”

Mori, who made his first trip to the Breeders’ Cup in 2000, has become a regular presence in the championships since his return two years ago, when Full Flat finished fifth in the Juvenile.

“Mori has been a pioneer,” Hunter said. “It has been a pleasure cutting my teeth with him. He will be traveling a lot during his last eight years of training (before mandatory retirement at age 71). If we can just get his strike rate in the U.S. going, then we’d be cooking with gas.”

This year Mori will look after Jasper Great in next Friday’s Juvenile. The next day he has Matera Sky in the Sprint and Jasper Prince and Pingxiang in either the Dirt Mile or the Sprint. Although Jasper Krone was also pre-entered in the Juvenile and Juvenile Turf, Hunter said he will not be shipped to Del Mar.

In Mori’s recent trips across the Pacific, it has become evident he trusts Hunter and has made her a valued member of his team. The same may be said of her professional relationships with Yoshito Yahagi, the charismatic trainer of Loves Only You and Distaff long shot Marché Lorraine, and Hideaki Fujiwara, who looks after Mile candidate Vin de Garde.

“I couldn’t do what I do without the horsemen wanting to come in the first place,” Hunter said. “The desire was always there. I hope that my presence and assistance have had an impact. By hiring a Japanese liaison, the Breeders’ Cup has provided the support (connections) need to navigate a pretty unique and difficult system that is U.S. racing.”

Lasix out; internationals in

The American racing system has for so long included the use of Lasix, which has been an eternal dilemma for visiting trainers who are not allowed to use it back home.

As English trainer John Gosden famously said at Santa Anita in 2009, “I know that everyone else is using it, and I don’t want to find out when I get back to the barn that, under that pressure, (my horse) has bled, and others have had the advantage of using Lasix. So that is why I use it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

As with Thoroughbred racing around most of the rest of the world, the use of Lasix is forbidden in Japan. Now that it has been eliminated from the Breeders’ Cup, Hunter said, “I think that has a positive impact, for sure. Some Japanese considered it cheating. Others ignored it and tried anyway. But it definitely is better to have it gone.”

‘Kick some butt’

With Lasix out of the picture, trainers like Mori, Yahagi and Fujiwara and the ownership syndicates for whom they work still face a tough choice when it comes to the Breeders’ Cup. Unlike England, where purses are nowhere near the average $2 million per championship next week, Japan has a long history of offering generous prize money for its races.

“For some owners that makes it worth skipping the Breeders’ Cup,” Hunter said. “But there is a desire in Japan to reach out and kick some butt elsewhere. You can only win so many times at home before you want to try something new.”

Yahagi is a perfect example. He has won Japan’s Triple Crown last year with Contrail. In 2019 he had the country’s horse of the year with Lys Gracieux, who won Australia’s best race, the Cox Plate (G1), on her way to $11 million in earnings.

He has conquered Japan and Australia. Now Yahagi wants to stake his claim in America. And he wants to do it next week.

“His best dirt mare and turf mare came over,” Hunter said. “They didn’t have much more to prove back home, so why not?”

That desire to reach the unreachable star, or at least the unprecedented one, is something Hunter uses as a sales pitch to owners and trainers back in Japan.

“I’m always looking for those kinds of folks who are willing to look for glory for glory’s sake instead of dollar signs,” she said. “At the Breeders’ Cup you get to take on some of the best Europeans and the best Americans, all for money better than Europe.”

It is the same sort of goal that the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (G1) has been for one Japanese horse after another. It has gone unrequited. Hunter also uses the Arc as a recruiting tool, although not just because the results have been a source of frustration for Japan. So have three consecutive years of wet race-day weather in Paris.

“The Breeders’ Cup is usually going to have ground more likely to favor Japanese horses,” she said. With a laugh, she added, “The soggier the Arc gets, the better I’m going to be able to recruit.” 

Trips to the winner’s circle are the ultimate carrot. Whether it is Loves Only You or another horse, Hunter said it is only a matter of time before a trophy is brought back to Asia.

“The Japanese will win a Breeders’ Cup race very soon, possibly next weekend,” she said. “If not, within the next five years, without a doubt in my mind.”

COVID be damned

Hunter has everything from new drug rules to old weather patterns in her tool kit. Before she went to work for the Breeders’ Cup, only nine Japanese horses had raced in the first 32 runnings of the championships. In the six renewals since, counting next week, she has recruited 10.

“America had been kind of the Wild West of racing, and I’ve built a railroad,” Hunter said after a little push to open up about her role. “Now there is a smooth and easy way to get there with the help of many people, including IRB, tracks and so forth.”

Not even a pandemic could stop her or Japanese horsemen from their globetrotting. Hunter credited Mori’s perseverance to weather the coronavirus storm.

“I thought COVID was going to really mess my new business up,” Hunter said. “2019 had been epic. A runner in the Pegasus Turf, a runner in the Derby and Belmont, runners in the Belmont Oaks and Belmont Derby and then two runners in the Breeders’ Cup that year. So 2020 was going to be even bigger, I thought. It was, but not in the way I’d hoped. Mori powered through, virus be damned, and we went to the Breeders’ Cup last year.”

Hunter did not pause for long last winter. When Chuwa Wizard finished ninth last February in the $20 million Saudi Cup, she was there to handle the quarantine. Then she did the same thing for a month at Meydan, where Loves Only You finished a close third to Mishriff in the Dubai Sheema Classic (G1). That was before she and Mori went to the Preakness and Belmont Stakes with France Go de Ina.

“Now I’m back for the Breeders’ Cup,” she said, “so 2021 has been fantastic. I’ve never been so busy.”

Home away from home

Lest anyone think this is all just a conduit for her to grab an unidentified brass ring to return to America, Hunter squelched that notion without hesitation.

“Japan is my home,” she said. “America is my job. I’ve spent more time in Japan the last five years than I did the previous eight combined. So I get plenty of the good ol’ USA this time each year now. If I’m lucky I’ll be doing this ’til I die.”

Long after her first trip to see and touch Silver Charm, the 1997 Kentucky Derby winner whom she still idolizes even as he has returned to the U.S., Hunter has woven herself into the racing fiber in Japan. She brings that unrelenting work ethic on her trips not only to the Breeders’ Cup but around the world.

Whether she is supervising a quarantine in Saudi Arabia, walking with horses to the track each morning at Meydan, filling out endless paperwork that could stretch across the Pacific, carting a wheelbarrow full of ice for a groom at Pimlico or interpreting a multilingual media gaggle outside a barn at Del Mar, Hunter will seemingly do anything for her colleagues from Japan.

“I’ve known these trainers for the better part of eight years.” Hunter said. “Fujiwara is like my uncle, because he sponsored my permanent residency in Japan. I have traveled so much with the stable staffers that they are like my brothers and sisters. I genuinely love these guys. When you’re helping out friends and family, you want to go above and beyond, so I give it my all.”

She does have her limits.

“I don’t translate for ‘picking up ladies,’ ” Hunter said. “I’ll do your laundry, translate an entire menu and buy you socks, but I won’t be an interpreter in the bar. Otherwise, I do pretty much anything I need to do to make sure the Japanese are happy, comfortable and getting the most out of their trip.”

And one more thing. She knows she has a very important task at the top of her to-do list when she relieves a friend looking after her apartment in Japan.

“I’ve got to get home to the cats.”