By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 30, 2008
TOKYO, May 29 -- Perched on a white loveseat in his semi-celestial penthouse office in central Tokyo, the Japanese slot machine mogul turned horseman is happy.
"I really enjoy every day of my life right now," said Hidetoshi Yamamoto, who began buying thoroughbreds just four years ago.
The horse racing world is atwitter over one of his colts, a 3-year-old named Casino Drive. Can he win the Belmont Stakes? Can he steal the final jewel of the Triple Crown away from Big Brown, a dominating winner at the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness?
The questions tantalize because they are laced with mystery.
Casino Drive, Kentucky-bred but trained in Japan, has raced just twice. He won easily in Kyoto in late February and again in the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont in early May.
But the horse's dark-star status as a spoiler derives less from his race history than from his bloodline.
His mother, the mare Better Than Honour, gave birth to the last two winners of the Belmont Stakes.
Casino Drive, too, could possess the rare blend of speed and stamina that it takes to grind out a win over the punishing 1 1/2 miles of a race that is called "The Test of the Champion."
Yamamoto, 52, remembers last year's Belmont winner with incendiary clarity.
From a paddock outside of Tokyo, he was watching on television by tape delay, owing to the 13-hour time difference.
The favorite in the race was Curlin, winner of the Preakness in 2007. But a filly named Rags to Riches, who happens to be the older half-sister of Casino Drive, surged to the lead and won the race by a head.
As Yamamoto soon learned, only two fillies in 139 years had won the Belmont Stakes and the last filly did it in 1905.
"I lost my words because I never even dreamed of a girl horse winning such a race," Yamamoto said.
He, of course, already knew about Casino Drive's half-brother, Jazil. That horse had won at Belmont the previous June.
A few months after that 2006 race, Yamamoto and Kazuo Fujisawa, one of Japan's most successful trainers, traveled together to the Keeneland yearling sale in Lexington, Ky., to buy Casino Drive.
They had been prepared to bid up to $3 million for the horse. Bloodlines on his father's side reach back to A.P. Indy, which won the Belmont Stakes in 1992, and to two winners of the Triple Crown, Seattle Slew and Secretariat.
For reasons that he still does not quite understand, Yamamoto managed to buy Casino Drive for the relative bargain price of $950,000.
After watching the Belmont Stakes on TV last June, Yamamoto knew exactly what he must do.
"We had to take Casino Drive to Belmont," he recalled thinking. "I immediately told my feelings to Mr. Fujisawa, who said he would do whatever it takes to run the horse in the great race. We said to each other that this horse has a lot of expectations and a dream upon itself."
In Japan last year, Casino Drive's training focused on marrying endurance with speed, Yamamoto said. But it did not go well, especially at first.
The colt was hobbled by minor injuries that prevented him from racing. He was not ready to race until Feb. 23, which was just after his third birthday. Then he blew away a strong field of Japanese horses at Kyoto Racecourse, winning by 11 1/2 lengths.
An influenza outbreak nixed plans to race Casino Drive again in Japan and he had to be quarantined for two months. When he was ruled free of disease, he boarded a plane for the United States.
After the long flight from Tokyo, he arrived in New York on April 30. Just 11 days later, he ran his first race in the United States, wining the $200,000 Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont by 5 3/4 lengths.
"I do believe that Casino Drive was at his worst when he ran in that race," Yamamoto said. "He was at the very bottom of his conditioning and his start was not very good."
The horse recovered from the poor start, Yamamoto said, because of the skill of his veteran American jockey, Kent Desormeaux.
Desormeaux, a 38-year-old Cajun who is in the Racing Hall of Fame and holds the U.S. record for the most races won in a single year, is a pivotal figure in the coming face-off between Casino Drive and Big Brown.
Having ridden for years in Japan, Desormeaux is a friend of Yamamoto and of Fujisawa.
"When Kent comes over to Japan, Mr. Fujisawa and I become his guarantor for his working visa as a jockey," Yamamoto said. "We go out to dinner and we have him ride my horses."
But Desormeaux, amazingly enough, also is the jockey for Big Brown.
He rode the horse to victory at the Kentucky Derby and at the Preakness. At Belmont, he will be riding the Triple Crown contender, not the would-be Triple Crown spoiler.
"I am very disappointed about that," Yamamoto said.
Reporters have asked Desormeaux which horse he thinks will win at Belmont. He has declined to answer.
"We've got our hands full with this one," the jockey said of Casino Drive. "He's got that stride. . . . He's a phenomenal talent."
Japanese racing writers are saying that even if Casino Drive does not win, the horse's challenge is a breakthrough for horse racing in Japan, where racing purses are among the largest in the world but racing talent has lagged behind.
"It is an American-bred horse, but the eyes of an owner who chose this horse and the training by Mr. Fujisawa make Japanese feel proud," said Yoko Takizawa, a racing writer and author.
In his penthouse office, where he presides over an entertainment conglomerate that runs Pachinko parlors, creates video games and markets athletes, Yamamoto does not predict victory for Casino Drive.
"If Big Brown wins the race, then I will be really honored," he said, while smiling opaquely.
Yet since he began buying American and British thoroughbreds in 2004, Yamamoto has made no secret of his goals: He wants to win big-time U.S. races such as the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.
Racing in Japan, he said, is merely a "steppingstone."
No matter which horse wins, Yamamoto said, Casino Drive's long-term future is in the United States, not Japan.
"As a horseman, it is my obligation to hand down his genes to future generations," Yamamoto said. "If that is to be wished, it is better to do it in the States."
Yamamoto will be at Belmont Park on June 7 to watch his horse run.
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.
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