By Bloodhorse.com
TOKYO, Japan (Nov. 24, 2018) — The winner of the first race on the Japan Road to the Kentucky Derby is a filly. But that may not keep her from Churchill Downs on the first weekend in May.
Make Happy, a California-bred daughter of grade 1 winner Square Eddie , raced close to the pace in the Cattleya Sho Nov. 24 at Tokyo Racecourse. With Japan’s leading rider Christophe Lemaire in the irons, the bay filly bided her time until midway down the stretch, then quickly found another gear and drew away to a 2 1/2-length victory.
Kingen, a Darley-bred Godolphin runner with William Buick aboard, was along for second, and Johann, a Johannesburg colt, finished third in the 1,600-meter (about one mile) dirt event.
Make Happy, out of the Ten Most Wanted mare Silar Rules, was bred by Reddam Racing and sold to Shadai Farm at The Gulfstream Sale in March for $650,000. She is a full sister to grade 1 winner Ralis and to the grade 3-placed multiple stakes scorer B Squared. She won by 10 lengths at first asking Oct. 7 over the Tokyo dirt, where she defeated male rivals in her only prep for the Cattleya Sho.
Lemaire got the filly out first from the outside gate in a field of 14 but then took back and waited behind the leading pack until the field crested the stretch hill. When he asked her to run, Make Happy quickly did just that.
“Easy,” Lemaire said of the effort.
The Japan Road to the Kentucky Derby was expanded this year from three races to four, with the winner’s points escalating from 10 for the Cattleya Sho to 40 for the concluding leg, the March 31 Fukuryu Sho at Nakayama. The leading points earner is extended an invitation to the Run for the Roses and the series is unrelated to the main qualifying program, also established by Churchill Downs.
Shadai Farm’s Teruya Yoshida noted the filly is an unlikely candidate for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1), but he said the Longines Kentucky Oaks (G1) is not out of the question.
“If she will be this good from now on, we’ll consider it,” Yoshida said, although an Oaks bid likely would require Make Happy to earn points in competition in the United States.
Trainer Koichi Shinkai said Kentucky might be an option because Make Happy has “good aptitude on the dirt. Maybe not so much on the turf.”
Many more Japanese horses try the dirt in Dubai than in Kentucky, he said, “but the Yoshida family’s first impression is she is more suited to race in Kentucky than in Dubai.”