Japanese pair chasing the Cups dream

Wednesday 3 October 2018, 10:14am

Two of the recently arrived horse in Melbourne for the spring carnival were lucky to depart before a typhoon hit Japan.

Chestnut Coat and Sole Impact arrived in Melbourne to begin their quarantine stay the day Typhoon Trami hit Japan, injuring 200 people.

Speaking through an interpreter, Sole Impact's trainer Hirofumi Toda said he was reluctant to talk about how lucky the team was to leave Japan before the typhoon arrived.

"The typhoon made a lot of trouble in Japan," Toda said.

"The JRA cancelled two days of racing in a row.

"I should not say anything about typhoon things. Typhoon made for us to travel well because many people could die from these things."

While owned and trained by different groups, Chestnut Coat and Sole Impact are travelling under the Team Japan banner.

Sole Impact is owned by Yoshiro Kubota with his son Yasushi owning Chestnut Coat.

Chestnut Coat is almost assured of a start in the Caulfield Cup as No. 26 in the ballot order while Sole Impact is down the list at 51.

Toda said should Sole Impact not gain a start in the Caulfield Cup he would swing his attention to the Geelong Cup on October 24.

"We will make the horses condition flexible," Toda said.

"Sole Impact is very good over the 2400 metre distance and both races are over the same distance so I don't worry.

"I'm happy for either race."

Toda expects Adelaide-based jockey Ryusei Sukai to ride the stayer in trackwork before he makes his Australian debut.

"If he were to ride at Moonee Valley this Friday he will come here Friday morning to ride the horse, if not the following week," he said.

Katsuichi Kaizawa, the groom travelling with Chestnut Coat, said the horse travelled well and would have a steady build-up to the Caulfield Cup.

"IRT the transport company really supported us well," Kaizawa said.

"The horse travelled really, really well.

"We did a fast work-out on the Tokyo racecourse before travelling two days before and what we do here is adjustment."

"We want to do a little strong gallop but we'll see how it goes."

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »