MidnightWalker

PFP by mutiemagic (tumblr) | 21 Years old | He/Him

[ひよ@C108 土曜日 東2 ハ-42ab @hiyo____co]

かみぐせジャーニー

[mariotwt confessions @mariotwtconfess]

"Obese Mario falls off a chair and dies"

[MidnightWalker @MarkLolCore]

@miamiamiamimim May I get some context?

[Jade @VioletFl0werz]

this is basically how i feel

[水獭🦦 @Ark_koiz35]

幻觉

[RX @RX_25treet]

🌸

[MidnightWalker @MarkLolCore]

@cocoarini LETS GOOOOOO

[𝐊𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐀｜𝐋𝐕.𝐂✦𝐍🐊 @Kontenasan_bf]

# Golden Journey: The Fifty Races of Stay Gold

430 kilograms. Fifty starts, seven wins — with twelve seconds and eight thirds. The only top-level race he ever won came in the final start of his career.
That horse became the sire of a Japanese Triple Crown winner.

---

May 2011, Tokyo Racecourse. After riding Orfevre to victory in the Japanese Derby, Kenichi Ikezoe said:

"He got squeezed and bumped mid-race, but he has such fight in him that he never flinched. He just kept coming."

His trainer, Yasutoshi Ikee, added:

"That willfulness he inherited from his father — this time it worked in his favor."

From his father.

That father won just seven of his fifty career starts. He failed to win in nineteen domestic Grade 1 starts. A lifelong inability to run straight plagued him; as a young horse he once made a U-turn in the middle of a race and threw his jockey. In his retirement year, he crossed the line first in a graded race and was disqualified for interference.

And with every start, his following grew.

Stay Gold. This is his journey, all fifty starts of it, retraced from the beginning.

On March 24, 1994, a bay colt was born at Shiraoi Farm in Hokkaido.

His sire was Sunday Silence — though this was only the stallion's third crop, and as the farm's broodmare manager admitted, "we were still feeling our way, with no real idea what kind of foals he'd throw." What drew the farm's attention first was the dam's side. His mother, Golden Sash, was a well-bred daughter of Dictus and a younger sister to the brilliant Soccer Boy.

The foal was lively, and a handful. A young woman on the farm staff looked after him, and he pestered her constantly, even while she brushed him.

When the colt was two or three months old, a trainer from Ritto came to see him: Yasuo Ikee, curious about what a Sunday Silence foal actually looked like.

"Small for a colt. Small-framed, too... Small, but the balance is good. Not bad at all."

As for temperament, nothing about the foal struck him as a problem.

The following summer, Ikee's son Yasutoshi — then working in his father's stable — visited Northern Farm. A beautifully bred horse was coming to the yard, and he went to meet the yearling in high spirits.

The horse was standing on two legs.

He reared, again and again — so often that he seemed to spend more time upright than walking. Watching the handler's losing battle, Yasutoshi could only smile grimly.

"I dreaded the thought of a horse this difficult coming into our stable. And he's so small. Can he really make it as a racehorse?"

In 1996, Stay Gold arrived at the Ritto Training Center as a two-year-old. For all his reputation at the farm, to Yasuo Ikee he looked like "an ordinary young horse — temperament and all."

His groom, Yamamoto, saw something else.

One day, Stay Gold tore apart the corrective headgear designed to stop him throwing his head up — a piece of tack built not to break. In all his years on the job, Yamamoto had never seen one destroyed.

"Maybe this horse simply believes he comes first. Always."

In his training, though, the colt was perfectly tractable. He came along smoothly, and on December 1, 1996, he made his debut over 2,000 meters on turf at Hanshin. In the saddle was the French star Olivier Peslier, riding in Japan on a short-term license. Third choice in a field of fourteen, Stay Gold came from midfield with a good turn of foot for third. Ikee was satisfied. This one would win soon enough.

Twenty days later came his second start, over the same course and distance at Hanshin. On the strength of that debut, he was sent off favorite. He was tracking the pace in midfield, and Ikee was thinking, He'll win this, when the view through his binoculars began to look wrong. The gap to the leaders kept growing. An injury? Stay Gold dropped steadily back and finished last of the sixteen, six full seconds behind the winner. The culprit appeared to be bucked shins, the shin soreness common in young horses. To Ikee's eye, the colt had simply stopped trying the moment his legs bothered him. He had believed the race was theirs, and the disappointment cut deep.

Ahead of the third start, a new rider was called in: Shigefumi Kumazawa, the man who had won an Arima Kinen on the outsider Daiyusaku. The horse he beat that day was Mejiro McQueen — trained by Yasuo Ikee. That race, oddly enough, was the beginning of their working relationship; Ikee had been asking Kumazawa to help with trackwork and take rides ever since.

"If a rider as good as Peslier wants no part of him, I'm in for it."

Half flattered, half apprehensive, Kumazawa climbed aboard Stay Gold for the first time. And found himself pleasantly baffled.

"Hang on — he's not that difficult. He's small, and the ride isn't exactly comfortable, but he's light underneath me and the feel isn't bad at all. The pedigree is beyond question. ... This might be a good horse."

February 15, 1997, a dirt maiden over 1,800 meters at Kyoto. Stay Gold was sent off at 1.9, the overwhelming favorite. He looked fine in the paddock, fine in the warm-up. He took kickback without a flicker of complaint, and the feel underneath Kumazawa was, in his words, "really good." He's going to win. Passing the third corner, both the rider and Ikee in the stands were sure of it.

The incident came at the final turn. The horse would not turn. He ran through the bend — out, and out, and further out. Kumazawa fought for control and got none. A man with a long career riding over jumps felt, for the first time in a race, genuine fear. Then he was on the ground.

As Stay Gold galloped away without him, one thought — by Kumazawa's own account — ran through his head:

"So that's why Olivier didn't want to ride him..."

After the race, he allowed that "if I'd just sat quietly instead of riding to win, maybe it wouldn't have ended in a fall." Then he added:

"But a horse that can pull a U-turn at that speed, completely ignoring his rider? The physical ability in that animal is something else."

The wins still wouldn't come. Second at Hanshin in March, second again at Kyoto in April. The horse hung left constantly, forever trying to get out that way, and Kumazawa spent every race holding him straight, dreading the moment he might take out another runner.

Ikee, meanwhile, was forming a view. Sharp speed over short trips wasn't this horse's game. Let him roll along at an even tempo and he simply refused to get tired. A stayer.

The race he chose was a 2,400-meter maiden at Tokyo on May 11, 1997. Stay Gold hit the front in the long straight and, weaving left and right the whole way home, held on. Sixth start, first win.

"I had my hands full just keeping him straight — it was maddening — but he muscled his way through on raw ability," said Kumazawa. Joy, then honesty: "If he'd only run straight he'd win with so much less trouble... If we can make it in time, I'd love to get him to the Kikuka Sho."

At Chukyo the following month, over 2,500 meters, Kumazawa tried a scheme: keep him glued to the inside rail the entire way. Surely even this horse wouldn't jump the fence to get left. It worked. Hugging the rail throughout, Stay Gold led into the straight and held on for back-to-back wins.

"That was the first time riding Stay ever felt good."

After finishing fourth back on a right-handed course at Hanshin, he won a conditions race at Sapporo in September, the Akanko Tokubetsu — carried wide the whole way, wobbling through the straight, winning anyway — and the road to the Kikuka Sho, Japan's St Leger, was open. "That he can wander around like that and still win tells you about the engine," Ikee said. "It also tells you that you can never, ever relax with him."

In the trial, the Kyoto Shimbun Hai, he was only seventh in the betting and finished fourth; Matikane Fukukitaru won it, with Mejiro Bright closing.

Then, on November 2, the Kikuka Sho over Kyoto's 3,000 meters. Sent off tenth choice, he ran into the worst race imaginable: midway through, the pace collapsed. The furlong splits after the 1,000-meter mark read 12.8 — 13.6 — 13.5 — 13.6 — 13.0, with 2,000 meters passed in 2:08.3. A crawl — and a sprint-home finish was the one thing this horse could not do. Matikane Fukukitaru swept by them all; Stay Gold finished eighth.

But what surprised Ikee was how well the colt came out of it.

"He's so worked up going to the races, wasting so much energy on nothing — and yet look at him. Fresh. No after-effects whatsoever. Legs completely clean."

From then on, Stay Gold bounced back from every race with startling speed.

1/6🧵

[天満 マエミ Tenma Maemi 🍶🦊Phase Connect @tenmamaemi]

I FORGOT TO WASH MY KNIFE AND NOW MY APPLE SLICES TASTE LIKE ONION

[ｽﾔ🐴C108Day1東2ハ-46ab @samunepon]

テイクアウト２つで……

[MidnightWalker @MarkLolCore]

@uwumamusume A good lesson of fuck around, and find out.

[Abxtryy_cos @abxtryy]

Dream journey

[Friday Night @YakuzaFriday]

Friday at last…

[MidnightWalker @MarkLolCore]

@uwumamusume Truth nuke

[XIN @human_xin]

🤷🏻‍♂️

[Mes @AkagiLyo]

疾驰而来的久濑哥

[MidnightWalker @MarkLolCore]

@Nabwuchang PEAK MENTIONED

[MidnightWalker @MarkLolCore]

@uwumamusume They took some media too seriously?