The highly anticipated clash between two star three year old colts yet to taste defeat, the Deep Impact colt Contrail and the Heart’s Cry colt Salios, lived up to all expectations in an epic renewal of the Group 1 The Satsuki Sho (Japanese 2000 Guineas) (2000m) at Nakayama on Sunday.
Damian Lane was the first to make a move on Salios before Yuichi Fukunaga presented Contrail at the perfect time to edge past the Heart’s Cry colt by half a length with the Kinshasa no Kiseki colt
Galore Creek three and a half lengths back in third.
Making his 2020 debut, Contrail extends his winning sequence to four having been crowned the Champion 2yo colt last year with his highlight coming over the same course and distance in the Group 1 Hopeful Stakes.
By contrast all three wins by Salios at two were over 1600 metres and the last little bit may have found him out on Sunday.
A homebred for North Hill Farm’s Shinji Maeda, Contrail is a son of the perennial champion sire Deep Impact out of the Unbridled's Song mare Rhodochrosite, who was a $385,000 Keeneland September Sale yearling purchase by Koji Maeda, who was placed in four of her seven starts in Japan.
Rhodochrosite is a daughter of the Tiznow mare Folklore who was voted the champion American two-year-old of 2005 following her victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.
Rhodochrosite has a yearling colt from the final full crop of Deep Impact and was covered by Heart’s Cry in 2019.
