International Standout Loves Only You Grabs Eclipse

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International Standout Loves Only You Grabs Eclipse
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Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt
Loves Only You heads to the winner's circle after taking the 2021 Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Del Mar

The first Japan-based horse to win a Breeders' Cup race is now the first Japan-based horse to earn an Eclipse Award.

Loves Only You , who delivered a furious rally in the final sixteenth of a mile under jockey Yuga Kawada to earn a half-length victory in the Maker's Mark Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf (G1T) at Del Mar, is the champion turf female for 2021. As it turned out, Japan was just getting started on that Nov. 6 Breeders' Cup card as three races later Marche Lorraine  would upset the Longines Distaff (G1).


While the Breeders' Cup marked the lone North American start in 2021 for Loves Only You, the then-5-year-old daughter of Deep Impact  defeated War Like Goddess  in the Filly & Mare Turf. War Like Goddess was the divisional favorite going into that Breeders' Cup test, where she led into the stretch but faded to third. The fact that Loves Only You proved an international standout—typically competing against males—also helped her Eclipse cause.

Bred in Japan by Northern Farm, Loves Only You won the Kyoto Kinen (G2) and finished second in the Sapporo Kinen (G2) in Japan. She finished third in the Longines Dubai Sheema Classic (G1) at Meydan, and scored a pair of group 1 wins in Hong Kong: the FWD Queen Elizabeth II Cup and the Longines Hong Kong Cup. (The only race restricted to females she contested in 2021 was the Filly & Mare Turf.)

Trainer Yoshito Yahagi, who plotted that impressive 2021 race schedule, celebrated the mare's landmark Breeders' Cup victory.

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"The race seemed like a very competitive race; it was a very tough race," Yahagi said after the win. "But before the race we thought our horse was number one. We believed it. She won this great race and so I like to respect my horse."

Speaking through an interpreter after Breeders' Cup, DMM Dream Club director Takumi Nomoto predicted that U.S. racing would see more Japan-based horses in Breeders' Cup and beyond in the coming years.

"We made history. We won the Breeders' Cup," Nomoto said. "So this is making all the Japanese horse racing industry (consider) the Breeders' Cup challenge. I think winning will open Breeders' Cup to Japanese racing."

And Nomoto said that before Marche Lorraine's victory.