WHAT an amazing experience it was to attend the sixth Group 1 Saudi Cup, at $20 million the most valuable race in the world, in Riyadh on Saturday.

Attracting two of the very best horses in the world, Romantic Warrior and Forever Young, the race lived up to all the hype preceding the evening, and a neck separated the pair on the line, with the rest well in arrears. It was not the result many hearts wanted, the Corduff Stud-bred Romantic Warrior going down by a neck, but what a brave performance the gelding put up on his first time to race on dirt. He lost nothing in finishing second, and boosted his already record earnings by a further $3.5 million.

The result was an eighth career success in 10 starts for the four-year-old Forever Young, and the win took his massive haul to £11.5 million. This was just his second Group 1 win, in addition to the Tokyo Daishoten, but he has a remarkable race record now, having also won both the UAE Derby and Saudi Derby, the Japan Dirt Classic, and he was placed third in both the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby and Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic.

This was an extra special highlight on a night to remember for Japanese racing and breeding. Four horses trained there won on the eight-race card (one of those races was for purebred Arabians), and three were bred in Japan. Forever Young’s owner Susumu Fujita, trainer Yoshito Yahagi and jockey Ryusei Sakai warmed up for the race by winning the Group 2 Neom Cup.

Bred by Northern Racing, Forever Young, along with the other two Japanese-bred winners, is sired by a Shadai stallion, in this case Real Steel (Deep Impact) who stands this season for the equivalent of a little more than €30,000. His fourth crop are this year’s juveniles, and while he has one of the best horses in the world to represent him, Real Steel’s first two crops have only yielded four stakes winners.

Real Steel, who gained his sole career Group 1 win outside his native Japan when he won the 2026 Dubai World Cup, was runner-up in two of Japan’s classics, their 2000 Guineas and St Leger. He raced until the age of six. His first crop included a pair of Group 2-winning colts, and another son who placed at that level. Forever Young, a stakes-winning sprinter and three other group-placed runners are the best of his second crop, while last year’s two-year-olds had a pair who were second in blacktype races.

Dominant force

Real Steel’s influence on his son is half the equation, though many will argue that it is his dam who is the dominant force. She is Forever Darling, a daughter of Congrats (A P Indy), and while she was a mere $8,000 yearling purchase, she won the Group 2 Santa Ynez Stakes at Santa Anita on dirt at three before being sold to Japan. In addition to being the dam of two graded stakes winners now, in 2020 her yearling son Danon My Soul (Deep Impact) sold for $3.7 million in Japan to become the most expensive yearling sold there. He won back £58,000 with a single victory.

Forever Darling’s breeding record shows that four of her first five foals have won, the other placed, and last year she notched up another blacktype winner when her daughter Brown Ratchet (Kizuna) won the Group 3 Artemis Stakes at Tokyo, her second win in three starts as a two-year-old. There are other well-bred youngsters in the wings, and last year Forever Darling was covered by Real Steel.

This is not the only significant happening in recent times in the family, and last year Forever Young was joined on the Group/Grade 1 roster by his close relation, Sierra Leone (Gun Runner). The pair are out of half-sisters and they also finished second and third in the 2024 Grade 1 Kentucky Derby.

Any disappointment felt by connections following the performance of City Of Troy, covering at Coolmore for a fee of €75,000 this season, in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic in November was surely compensated for by the fact that they owned the winner, Sierra Leone. Though a readymade stallion now, Sierra Leone will continue to race this year, and hope to provide more headlines in a career that is already a celebrated one.

Eclipse Award

Originally touted as a likely Saudi Cup challenger himself this year, Sierra Leone first made the news as a yearling, selling for $2,200,000, and he has now won $6 million in purses. In January he was voted the champion three-year-old in the USA for 2024, and given a much-deserved Eclipse Award. His Breeders’ Cup Classic victory was his second Grade 1 win, after the Blue Grass Stakes, and he was placed in both the Grade 1 Belmont and Travers Stakes.

Sierra Leone is the first winner for his dam Heavenly Love (Malibu Moon), herself a Grade 1 winner at two of the Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland. Sierra Leone was bred by Debbie Oxley who raced Heavenly Love and that mare’s dam, Darling My Darling (Deputy Minister). A head and three-parts of a length was all there was between Darling My Darling twice being successful in Grade 1 races, the Frizette Stakes and Matron Stakes.

Horse of the year

Forever Young’s third dam was Roamin Rachel (Mining), and the best of her nine wins, from 15 starts, came in the Grade 1 Ballerina Handicap. She may only be the dam of three winners, but one of these was even better than Darling My Darling. He was the Japanese Horse of the Year and Group 1 Japan Cup winner, Zenno Rob Roy (Sunday Silence), produced two years after Roamin Rachel was sold to Japan in 1998 for $750,000.

This is a female line that is adept at producing top-class winners in the USA and Japan, and one that has enjoyed negligible success in Europe. One of Roamin Rachel’s daughters, the once-raced Stray Cat (Storm Cat), bred four blacktype winners in Japan, three of them in Group 3 races.

Yet another US Grade 1 winner appears in the fourth remove of Forever Young’s family, and she is Cat’s Cradle (Flying Paster). Classic-winning trainer David Hofmans, who died last year, trained Cat’s Cradle for the then octogenarian Georgia Ridder, who also raced Alphabet Soup at the time. Ribber raced the filly’s sire, who had the misfortune to be born in the same crop as Spectacular Bid.

Cat’s Cradle needed special handling. She was one of the best three-year-old fillies in 1995 but had the misfortune to injure an ankle after winning the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes at Belmont Park and didn’t run for almost a year.

At four she gave the Ridder-Hofmans partnership a nice sequel to their Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup success with Alphabet Soup by winning the California Cup Distaff at Santa Anita.

Ridder bought Cat’s Cradle’s dam, Tangled (Linkage), for $90,000 as a yearling but she never raced.