After Hat Trick won the Kyoto Kimpai in January 2005, his breeders recalled a period when his future as a racehorse had been in doubt. A serious hock injury during his preparation had required fixation with bolts. He had also suffered hypoproteinemia, involving abnormally low blood protein. Oiwake Farm's Japanese-language interview preserved the difficulties preceding his late debut.
By December, he had won the Mile Championship at Kyoto and the Hong Kong Mile at Sha Tin. Between the early promise and those two championships lay four consecutive defeats, including fifteenth in the Yasuda Kinen. Following that uneven season explains both the attraction and the difficulty of Hat Trick: a horse with exceptional finishing speed who still needed a workable passage through a race.
A debut after the Classics had begun
Hat Trick was foaled on April 26, 2001, at Oiwake Farm in Hokkaido. He was by Sunday Silence out of Tricky Code, an American-bred daughter of Lost Code. He raced for Carrot Farm, and his championship victories came under the care of Katsuhiko Sumii at Ritto. The Japan Racing Horse Association's profile records his purchase at the 2001 Select Sale as a foal, with a hammer price of 68 million yen.
In that contemporary JBBA interview, staff said the bolts remained in his hock and his campaign would need care. Their account helps explain the late start. It does not establish a medical explanation for every subsequent defeat.
He made his debut at Tokyo on May 8, 2004, winning a 1,600-meter maiden with Yoshitomi Shibata aboard. At that point, the Satsuki Sho had already been run. Hat Trick's route to prominence would develop through the lower classes, with no appearance in any of the three colts' Classics. His JBIS race record begins with this May victory, then another at Tokyo three weeks later in the Botan Sho.
Shibata's assessment after that second win offers a revealing early view of the eventual mile champion. In Radio NIKKEI's race-day comments, he suggested that a longer distance would suit the colt better, while acknowledging the good finish he had produced over the mile. That was an opinion formed after two starts. Reading it alongside the subsequent career shows how a horse's best assignment can become clearer with experience, rather than arriving as a settled fact at the beginning.
The first graded attempt brought ninth place in the Radio Tampa Sho over 1,800 meters at Fukushima in July. After a break, Hat Trick won an allowance race over the same distance at Kyoto in October, then the Shimizu Stakes over 1,600 meters there in November. Yutaka Take rode both autumn victories. Five starts had produced four wins, and the colt who began racing after the Classic season opened was ready for older horses in open company.
Four consecutive wins, with reservations attached
The Kyoto Kimpai on January 5, 2005, extended that sequence. Carrying 54 kilograms under Take, Hat Trick won his first graded race over 1,600 meters. Oiwake's staff had expected him to race closer to the front; seeing him so far back and wide turning into the straight, they doubted whether he could recover enough ground. His acceleration surprised even the people who had bred him.
Staff also questioned whether charging from the rear would work consistently against stronger open-class horses. The reservation preceded the spring defeats: his connections had identified a vulnerability while his record was still gathering momentum.
At Tokyo on January 30, he won the Tokyo Shimbun Hai in 1:33.7, defeating Kinetics by three-quarters of a length. The contemporary race report places him near the back before he joined Kinetics in the late challenge. Great Journey, who had led, held third; Asakusa Den'en finished fourth. Take had now ridden him to four consecutive victories, two of them graded.
The JBBA's follow-up farm interview adds details that the finishing order leaves out. Hat Trick had been highly strung after the trip to Tokyo and lost a shoe during the warm-up. Staff were relieved that he concentrated once the race began. His estimated final 600 meters took 32.9 seconds, and they regarded his ability to win a slowly run race as a step forward. They remained cautious about the challenges awaiting him against the established mile specialists.
He was unbeaten in five races at 1,600 meters and had won all three of his Tokyo appearances. Those figures made the Yasuda Kinen an attractive objective: he had already won over its course and distance. The opposition, however, would represent another increase in difficulty. Asakusa Den'en's fourth in January also gives the season a useful thread; a horse Hat Trick had beaten in the winter would become the spring champion.
The mile division caught up with him
Hat Trick started favorite for the Milers Cup at Hanshin in April and finished ninth. At Tokyo in June, he was fifteenth in the Yasuda Kinen won by Asakusa Den'en. JRA-VAN's Japanese retrospective describes interference near the beginning of the Hanshin straight and a failure to find a clear passage in the Yasuda. The horse's way of racing required him to negotiate opponents before he could use his strongest asset.
Autumn brought trials over longer distances. He finished ninth in the Mainichi Okan over 1,800 meters, then seventh in the autumn Tenno Sho over 2,000. The sequence of ninth, fifteenth, ninth and seventh gave bettors little encouragement if they considered placings alone. Yet the races posed different problems, and the last supplied a reason for his breeder to look ahead with renewed interest.
The JRA's account of the 2005 Tenno Sho records an opening 1,000 meters of 62.4 seconds. Seventeen of the eighteen runners were estimated to have completed their final 600 meters in under 34 seconds. In such a compressed finish, a horse waiting behind had to gain ground against rivals who were themselves accelerating. Hat Trick finished only four-tenths of a second behind Heavenly Romance, despite occupying seventh place.
In their interview after the Mile Championship, Oiwake staff recalled noticing a more developed physique in autumn and taking encouragement from his fastest closing sectional in the Tenno Sho. They also believed Olivier Peslier had learned something about the horse in that race. These were the breeder's assessments, made around his return to winning form. They explain why the four defeats had not extinguished confidence within the team.
Kyoto: the challenge began before the straight
The Mile Championship on November 20 gathered several different claims to the division. Durandal had won the race in 2003 and 2004, as documented in his JRA career profile, and was favorite for a third victory. Line Craft, the three-year-old filly, was second choice. Hat Trick was third, returning to a course where all three of his previous appearances, including the 1,800-meter allowance, had ended in victory.
Peslier held him near the rear, but his winning ride involved more than waiting for the straight. The JRA's contemporary account describes him beginning to urge Hat Trick forward after the third corner. Daiwa Major, racing much closer to the pace, took over in front and continued strongly. Hat Trick arrived down the outside and caught him by a nose, with Line Craft another length away in third.
The official chart records both colts carrying 57 kilograms and both being timed at 1:32.1. The result depended on the precise order at the post. Durandal finished eighth. Hat Trick's first Grade 1 victory had come against a field containing the defending champion and a rival who would remain important to the mile division after him.
Peslier's move before the straight gave the challenge time to develop. Daiwa Major made Hat Trick sustain it to the line. The winning margin establishes the closeness of the contest; the ride shows how his finishing ability was put to work.
The JRHA's race-day report identified 1:32.1 as a race record at the time. Hat Trick had now won four times from four starts at Kyoto. The move back to familiar turf had restored him, but an overseas trip would offer a sterner test of whether that performance could travel. Three weeks after the narrow domestic victory, he would be asked to meet another mile field at Sha Tin.
Why his breeder wanted an outside draw in Hong Kong
Hat Trick and Asakusa Den'en represented Japan in the Hong Kong Mile on December 11. Their presence brought the winners of Japan's two principal older-horse mile championships into the same international field. On this occasion, the spring winner would finish sixth while the autumn winner carried his form abroad. Their winter meeting at Tokyo had become the first episode in a season that gave each a different championship.
An interview conducted two days after the Hong Kong race preserves a specific part of the preparation. In the JBBA report, Oiwake's Masashi Yoshida explained that he had hoped for an outside stall, considering the turf and Hat Trick's running style. He understood that Peslier wanted one too. Drawing gate ten was therefore welcomed by the breeder, rather than regarded simply as an obstacle to overcome.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club's running comments record the consequences: Hat Trick settled toward the rear in a wide position, then went wider turning into the straight. The Duke accelerated into the lead about 300 meters from home. Hat Trick's strongest advance came in the final 200 meters, and he passed the leader close to the finish. The wide passage had left him room to complete his challenge.
The official Hong Kong result gives a winning margin of a length and a quarter in 1:34.80 on good-to-firm turf. The Duke was second, Dave's Best third and Bullish Luck fourth. All four carried 126 pounds. Against his nearest rivals, Hat Trick had won without a weight advantage.
Those two records make the outside-draw preference understandable, while leaving its limits clear. A wide route entails covering ground; an inside route can demand finding gaps. For this particular horse, whose Yasuda had been frustrated by traffic, the breeder and jockey valued space. At Sha Tin he had enough acceleration to make that choice work. It would be too broad to turn his successful passage into a rule that outside stalls always benefit closers.
There was also a contrast in the races' closing rhythms. Kyoto's published race-leader splits ended with 12.2 seconds for the final 200 meters. At Sha Tin, the last 400 took 22.80, the fastest of its four 400-meter sections. These are race-level measurements, not Hat Trick's individual sectionals, and the different tracks prevent a direct time comparison. They do show that the two victories cannot both be described through one simple story of an exhausted field stopping in front of him.
A champion between two eras of Hong Kong mile winners
The international result extended a Japanese precedent. Eishin Preston had won the Hong Kong Mile in 2001; Hat Trick was the next Japanese-trained winner, four years later. The HKJC's historical winners' table then lists eight consecutive locally trained winners from 2006 through 2013, beginning with The Duke. Hat Trick's defeated opponent returned to win the race the following year.
Seen across that sequence, 2005 occupies a distinct position. Hat Trick converted a Japanese autumn championship into success against Hong Kong's milers immediately before their long winning run. The record gives his victory a meaningful international setting without needing to proclaim him superior to every champion in the surrounding years. On the day, he had traveled, negotiated a wide trip and beaten the home field.
The JRA's awards archive names him Japan's best short-distance horse for 2005. That contemporary category encompassed mile achievement; the title should not lead an overseas reader to picture a champion built around 1,200-meter sprint victories. Hat Trick never raced below 1,600 meters. His claim rested on four graded mile wins that year, including the two Grade 1s.
His peak proved brief. He made eight more appearances without winning, including twelfth in the 2006 Dubai Duty Free and eighth when defending the Mile Championship. His final start was sixth in the Milers Cup at Hanshin in April 2007. The completed record was eight wins from twenty-one starts, with no second or third places. His two championships were followed by an extended failure to reproduce winning form.
The Japanese miler in a French pedigree
His next career gave overseas readers another route to his name. Hat Trick entered stud in the United States in 2008, and later stood at Gainesway in Kentucky. The farm's announcement of its 2017 fees includes him among its international sires. A Japanese-trained son of Sunday Silence was now supplying a paternal line to breeders outside Japan.
One of his sons, Dabirsim, brought that line to French juvenile racing. France Galop's account identifies him as the outstanding two-year-old of 2011 and winner of both the Prix Morny and Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. The colt's success came much earlier in life than his father's. Hat Trick's delayed debut had reflected his own troubled preparation; it did not prescribe the timetable on which his offspring would develop.
Dabirsim went on to become a stallion, and a France Galop breeding report from 2022 explicitly discussed him as a means of accessing Japanese bloodlines in France. Readers encountering that pedigree can follow it back through Hat Trick to Sunday Silence, and from a French juvenile championship to the two mile victories that secured the father's racing reputation.
The geographical spread continued beyond Europe. JBIS lists the Brazilian-bred Macadamia among Hat Trick's Grade 1-winning offspring, with her victory in the 2023 Gamely Stakes in California. His influence reached different breeding populations and racing programs long after his own final appearance. The horse whose career began with a maiden at Tokyo had become a name connecting Japanese racing with pedigrees being used and tested far from home.