Melbourne Cup 2015: Fame could put Japan back in the racing game after decade of discontent

SHOULD Fame Game justify his Phar Lap-esque odds and win the Melbourne Cup it will put an end to a frustrating decade for the Japanese blighted by ill-fortune and tragedy.

07/11/2006 LIBRARY: Racehorse Delta Blues riden by jockey Yasunari Iwata holds on to win narrowly on the inside from stablemate Pop Rock ridden by Damien Oliver in Race 7, the 2006 Melbourne Cup at Flemington in Melbourne, 07/11/06.

WHEN Delta Blues narrowly beat fellow Japanese stayer Pop Rock to win the 2006 Melbourne Cup, the line was too difficult for headline writers to resist.

Australia’s greatest race was turning Japanese.

Racing Victoria’s international scout Leigh Jordan had been to the land of the rising thoroughbred and enticed the owners of Delta Blues and Pop Rock to take their chances here.

He had seen first-hand the incredibly rich breeding stock, the way the Japanese worked their horses on hard ground and the drive and endeavour of their trainers.

“The Japanese have always been very well suited to this race,’’ says Jordan. “The quality of the horses and the way they put the miles into their legs.’’

And so when Delta Blues hit the line it seemed an era of Japanese domination had commenced.

Yet should Fame Game justify his Phar Lap-esque odds of $3.20 and win this year’s Melbourne Cup, it will not mark the continuation of the anticipated era of success.

Instead it will put an end to a frustrating decade for the Japanese blighted by ill-fortune and tragedy.

Two impediments were air-born. First, equine influenza struck both the Australian and Japanese industries after the 2006 Melbourne Cup and stopped Japanese horses travelling here for four years.

Delta Blues and Yasunari Iwata winning the Melbourne Cup from Pop Rock.

Frustratingly for Melbourne Cup organisers and Japanese stables whose interest had been aroused by Delta Blues’ success, even when the equine influenza dissipated new quarantine arrangements made it difficult for Japanese horses to fulfil the requirements of understandably twitchy authorities in both countries.

Then another aerial dilemma.

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The direct flights that Delta Blues and Pop Rock had taken had been cancelled in the ensuing years and Japanese trainers were understandably reluctant to send their horses on an arduous trip via Singapore or Hong Kong.

So it was not until 2010, when an ageing warhorse Tokai Trick finished 12th behind Americain, that the Japanese returned.

And where previously there had been a full-blooded assault on the Melbourne Cup, the feeling was now the Japanese were only putting one hoof back in Australian waters.

“It’s taken awhile to get the momentum back after the equine influenza and then with the other travel complications,’’ says Jordan.

“But they are very happy with the new quarantine conditions and the facilities. And the race is worth $6 million, you can’t ignore that.’’

When the very well-credentialed Admire Rakti won last year’s Caulfield Cup and jogged into Melbourne Cup favouritism, it seemed the Japanese invasion was back on in earnest.

But the harrowing sight of Admire Rakti fading from last year’s race and eventually dying of heart failure not only distressed his connections, it sent a chill through the Japanese racing industry.

As with Japanese custom, Admire Rakti’s owner Riichi Kondo did not go to the races for months after his death. Jordan visited Kondo while he was at the Japan Cup to ensure the race’s reputation had not been blighted by the tragedy.

“Mr Kondo was deeply impacted,’’ says Jordan. “But I had dinner with him in Japan and he was a lot better. He actually had a runner prepared for the Melbourne Cup and he would have come this year, but the horse got injured.’’

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So there has been equine influenza, travel problems and the pall of death.

A series of events that, you imagine, would make tempting Japanese horses to come to Melbourne like inviting a snowball into a furnace.

But while Fame Game’s trainer Yoshitada Munakata acknowledges Admire Rakti’s death gained widespread publicity at home, he says Japanese stables were not daunted. Rather, they would like to honour Admire Rakti by winning the race that took his life.

Admire Rakti’s owner did not go to the races for months after his death.

“There is probably more of a stronger will to take the Melbourne Cup and we really want to win (after Admire Rakti was killed),’’ says Munakata. “It brought even more attention to the Melbourne Cup.’’

Speaking through an interpreter, the veteran trainer Munakata does not give a great deal away about Fame Game or his chances.

“He has got very good natural fitness and a very strong heart, that’s what makes him such a great horse,’’ he says when asked the best attributes of the six-year-old who finished behind only local champion Gold Ship in the prestigious Tenno Sho in May.

Munakata says he has known of the Melbourne Cup since getting his trainer’s licence — “so it’s a long time’’ – and winning the race would be the greatest achievement of his career.

But, as inscrutable as a trainer from any part of the world with a big chance to win the race, he was more elusive about Fame Game’s tactics after his controversial sixth-placed finish in the Caulfield Cup.

Melbourne Cup favourite Fame Game is worked at Werribee racecourse.

“We will see,’’ he says when you ask if Fame Game will be given more room to move than he was at Caulfield, where he only saw daylight in the last 200m and mustered a withering, but belated, sprint to the line.

Whatever the result, Jordan says the Japanese are again putting their best hoofs forward.

“Fame Game is top quality, no doubt,’’ he says. “He should have beaten Gold Ship in the Tenno Sho and Gold Ship is one of their best.’’

A victory by Fame Game or Hokko Brave would be in one sense clinical given the country’s vast investment in bloodstock and the professionalism of its stables, but also emotional after Admire Rakti’s death.

Most of all, this time, it could truly turn the Melbourne Cup Japanese.