15 years ago today
 

One the greatest confrontations between awesome horses with layoff lines happened...and in Japan of all places.

October 11th 1998:

You had Silence Suzuka, an invincible 4-year-old, under 130lbs, who was incredibly good since his connections allowed him to run-off in the early stages of races.




You had El Condor Pasa, a sensational 3-year-old, under 126lbs.




And you had a former two-year-old champion, Grass Wonder, making his 3yo debut under 121lbs. Grass Wonder is a full brother to multiple Grade 1 winning US millionaire Wonder Again.





Such a great race to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulekp5jedFM


Silence Suzuka was cutting back from 11 furlongs, where he had just lasted in a Grade 1 victory over Stay Gold (the sire of two-time Arc de Triomphe second place finisher, Orfevre)

Normally out in front by a city block, Silence Suzuka was only a few lengths clear early. The crowd got very excited when Grass Wonder made a move on the far turn, he faded to fifth. El Condor Pasa surged for second but never even remotely threatened the winner.

Look at the subsequent form for those horses. Silence Suzuka broke down on a 12 length lead in an important Gr 1 race in his next start.

El Condor Pasa firmly established himself as one of the greatest Japanese horses ever. He shipped six-thousand miles to race in Europe, and beat an all-star Group 1 field there over good ground.

Soundly beaten 2nd place finisher Tiger Hill won back to back Euro Group 1's in his next two starts. 3rd place finisher Dream Well was a multiple Group 1 winner in Europe. 4th place finisher Sagamix was the previous years Arc winner. 5th place finisher Borgia was a multiple Group 1 winner in Europe. The 7th place finisher came back to win a Group 1 the following year, and was a good second to Giant's Causeway and Fantastic Light.

He concluded an excellent four race campaign in Europe with a good 2nd in the Arc over boggy ground. A lot of good horses were very soundly beaten in that race, including Daylami and Fantastic Light for Godolphin.

Obviously, Grass Wonder came right back and established elite Group 1 level form.

1998 was a real exceptional year for Japanese horse racing. And all 3 of these horses in this race 15 years ago had US pedigree ties.

More today trivia:

38 years ago today, Saturday Night Live debuted with George Carlin as the host.

Can you post Rock Hard Tens career pps? I cant find video of when he beat St. Liam.

http://www1.drf.com/row/pps/rockhardten.pdf

It's going to be pretty cool when I can finally start pulling up the stars with TimeformUS pp's.

Cool. Thanks Dougie. He got good there for 6 months.

Speaking of St Liam...

I've always wondered this. So he only had one crop to race, right?


Is there any 2nd generation St Liams standing anywhere right now? Just to keep that line going? I was really excited for his prospects as a sire, and was tragic how he died so young.

I remember there was a St Liam horse that ran vs Wise Dan in the Firecracker at Churchill this past June. If that one isn't gelded maybe he has some potential at stud (just based on St Liam being his daddy). Or any good broodemares?

Pedigree Query lists his progeny out... but it seems jumbled

Alos I hadn't heard of this before... really awesome race/back story.

:):tro:

He doesn't have any viable stallion sons that I can think of. Buddy's Saint died and Seruni, the horse you're talking about who would be very hard to make a stallion of anyway, is gelded.

Obviously he has Havre de Grace, who Mandy Pope bought for $10 million at Fasig November last year. . . Think she went to Tapit.

This is the performance by Silence Suzuka that really makes you wonder if any turf horse, from anywhere, in history could have beat him on this day:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf-QxcJfFyo


To me, this is one of the greatest turf performances ever, because it was a case of a horse almost sprinting 10 furlongs. Basically going as fast as he can, for as far as he can, and easily seeing out the trip.

I looked through stuff on an old desktop computer and was able to find the PP's of the 2nd and 3rd place finishers from that race.

The 2nd place finisher Midnight Bet had won four races in a row coming into the race... and won Hong Kong's most important race, the Hong Kong International at 42/1 odds off of a significant layoff.



The race in which he finished 2nd by 9 lengths to Silence Suzuka, Midnight Bet also won the following years edition of that same race.


The 3rd place finisher, beaten 10 lengths was a good horse himself:



Taiki El Dorado was a son of Theatrical and he had a 9-5-2-2 lifetime record with over $1.2 million in earnings. Stay Gold, the horse he was 3 lengths clear of in his following start, is the sire of back-to-back Arc 2nd place finisher Orfevre.

9 and 10 lengths are huge margins over a turf course so firm, that 10 furlongs was run in a course record 1:57 4/5.

One of the many cool things about Silence Suzuka was that his pedigree was red, white, and blue. Sunday Silence was a horse with a turf pedigree, who somehow managed to win 3 of 4 meetings with one of history's greatest horses, Easy Goer. The dam of Silence Suzuka was a Southern Cal speed ball who set the pace in a Graded Stakes on dirt, going just 6 furlongs at Santa Anita.

The greatest display of speed that i witnessed live going 1 1/2 turf was Hawkster in the 1989 Oak Tree Invt...Just ran off with Russel Baze that day. Granted the turf at Santa Anita in the fall could be rock hard, but visually i was just stunned by that performance.

I've never heard of Silence Suzuka before. Thanks for the post...

silence suzuka didn't go to stud. he broke down in a race and couldn't be saved.

Watched it.

Do you know the show that used to rotate once month into the SNL time slot?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_(news_program)

http://greatbutforgotten.blogspot.co...eekend-tv.html

In those pre-VCR, pre-news channel days, Weekend was among the first to show footage of the then new punk rock scene in the UK. Everybody who saw the report was transfixed by it--it was so much cooler than the crap being fobbed off as music in the US (outside of New York and a very few other places). A small snippet of that report is at the beginning of this weird compilation clip from NBC:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNBWPvVSl8s

Actually NBC (through SNL and the Tomorrow show with Tom Synder) really was the first outlet for punk (and proto-punk) performances. Patti Smith (more proto-punk) on SNL in 1976 blew my effing mind at the time--so much different than the crap on the radio.

http://vimeo.com/5456823