JAPAN two, Hong Kong two. Japan two, Australia two.

The first score refers to the training results from the four Group 1 races staged in Hong Kong on Sunday, while the second score refers to the breeding of the winners.

Many of the winners are familiar. The feature race of the four Group 1 contests, the Hong Kong Cup, saw the five-year-old Loves Only You end her racing career on a high, and this comes just weeks after she made history for Japan at the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar.

Until last month Japan had been without a winner at the Breeders’ Cup, something that was surprising given that their runners have been prominent on their international travels, especially in Hong Kong, Dubai and in Australia. Making that breakthrough success was Loves Only You.

She has been a trailblazer for her native country, bringing the form that gained her success in the Japanese Oaks to Hong Kong earlier this year where she landed her second top-level win in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.

Loves Only You retires with earnings of over £6.5 million, thanks to four Group/Grade 1 triumphs among eight career success in just 16 starts. Her full-brother Real Steel (Deep Impact) won four times, his sole Group 1 win being gained in Dubai, but that was enough to boost his winnings to more than $7.5 million. He is now at stud at Shadai Stallion Station and his first crop are yearlings. They averaged €460,000 this year, seven of the eight offered being sold.

Miesque

Real Steel and Loves Only You are among seven winners, all but one by Deep Impact, from the unraced Loves Only Me (Storm Cat), a half-sister to the European champion juvenile filly Rumplestiltskin (Danehill), herself dam of the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks winner Tapestry (Galileo). The third dam of last weekend’s Group 1 winner is none other than the brilliant Miesque (Nureyev).

Interestingly, Loves Only You’s sole winning sibling that is not by Deep Impact is Raddolcendo (Danehill Dancer). However, that mare is the dam of Terzetto, winner of six of her nine starts to date including a pair of Group 3 races. Oh, and she is a daughter of the great Deep Impact!

The deceased Deep Impact also sired the other Japanese winner of a Group 1 race, the six-year-old Glory Vase repeating his success of two years ago in the Hong Kong Vase. Glory Vase was bred at Lake Villa Farm, sold at the JRHA Yearling Sale for 52 million yen (about $520,000) and racing for Silk Racing Co Ltd. This win, the sixth in his career, boosted his earnings to more than £5 million.

Glory Vase is the best colt to appear in his family for four generations. One of three winners from his four-time winning dam Mejiro Tsubone (Swept Overboard), Glory Vase’s third dam was Mejiro Ramonu (Mogami), the champion filly at two and three in her native country and winner of the Filly Triple Crown, comprising the 1000 Guineas, Oaks and Queen Elizabeth II Cup.