Furioso beat Transcend and Smart Falcon at Funabashi in September 2010, conceding both two kilograms. Each would later defeat him in a championship. Following those reversals reveals a regional stable competing directly with Japan's dirt elite, with the advantage changing between courses and seasons.
Furioso represented Funabashi throughout his racing life. His opponents included successive generations of JRA-trained dirt stars, from Vermilion and Kane Hekili to Espoir City and Transcend. The meetings were frequent enough to make his standing measurable. He was not simply a local horse whose reputation rested on victories against local opposition.
Funabashi was his base, not the limit of his competition
Foaled on May 1, 2004, Furioso was bred by Hashimoto Farm in Niikappu, Hokkaido. He was by Brian's Time out of the American-bred Fursa, a daughter of Mr. Prospector. Darley Japan Farm owned him, and Masayuki Kawashima trained him at Funabashi. The JBIS profile records eleven wins from thirty-nine starts, all in Japan. An internationally recognizable owner and pedigree had produced a racing career rooted in the regional system.
For an overseas reader, the distinction is institutional. JRA racing and the regional racing represented by NAR have separate organizations and registrations. Furioso remained a Funabashi-trained horse when JRA runners visited Ohi, Kawasaki or his home course for designated exchange races. Those races brought the systems together without requiring him to transfer. The affiliation column in their official results is therefore part of the story, not an incidental address.
The grading needs similar care. His six top-level victories comprise the 2006 Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun, then styled a domestic G1, and five subsequent Jpn1 wins. As JRA's explanation of grading makes clear, from 2007 Japan distinguished internationally graded flat races, using G, from other graded races, using Jpn. Six domestic top-level victories should not silently become six internationally classified Group 1 wins. Their sporting substance is best judged through the horses he actually defeated.
A juvenile champion who lost both spring Classics
He began at Funabashi in July 2006, winning his first two starts before finishing second in the Heiwa Sho. His first major victory came at Kawasaki on December 13. In the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun, Hiroyuki Uchida rode him from a forward position to beat the JRA-trained favorite Tropical Light by two lengths. Both carried 55 kilograms over 1,600 meters on slightly yielding dirt. Furioso was fifth choice, and Ampersand finished third.
The race supplied an early national comparison. Tropical Light led; Furioso was fourth at the first two recorded corners and second turning into the straight. He could follow another horse and pass it, rather than needing an uncontested lead. Ampersand and fourth-placed Top Sabaton would prevent the next season from becoming a straightforward march through the South Kanto Classics.
First came an unsuccessful experiment on grass. He finished seventh in the Kyodo News Service Hai at Tokyo and last of eleven in the Spring Stakes at Nakayama. The complete career table places these two turf defeats between his juvenile dirt title and his return to regional dirt racing. They show an avenue explored and abandoned; his subsequent reputation was built on a different surface.
Back at Ohi, he was third in the Haneda Hai, behind Top Sabaton, then second to Ampersand in the Tokyo Derby on June 6. The Derby chart records a neck between the first two, both timed at 2:05.0 over 2,000 meters. Furioso had started favorite. His juvenile title had not made him invulnerable among horses from the regional system itself.
Five weeks later, the Japan Dirt Derby brought JRA runners into the same Ohi distance. The favorite was Long Pride, with Ampersand second choice and Furioso third. Under Tadanari Konno, Furioso raced second early and led at the final two corners. He won in 2:02.9 on sloppy dirt, two and a half lengths ahead of Ampersand, with Long Pride another four lengths away. The official result gives all three colts 56 kilograms.
The Tokyo Derby and Japan Dirt Derby were different races, despite their similar English names. In 2007 the former was a South Kanto Classic; the latter was the exchange championship that admitted JRA opposition. Furioso lost the first narrowly and won the second decisively. Ampersand's presence in both finishes connects the two fields, while Long Pride's third supplies the direct central-racing comparison. The reversal occurred over the same distance, but on very different going.
Vermilion and Kane Hekili set the older-horse standard
Against older horses, Vermilion repeatedly stood in his way. Furioso finished second to him in both the 2007 JBC Classic and Tokyo Daishoten, with a tenth in the Japan Cup Dirt between them. The distinction between strong regional-course form and less effective JRA-course form was already appearing. It would remain relevant when he finally produced his best central-racing performance several years later.
Keita Tosaki became his regular partner in 2008. They won the Diolite Kinen over 2,400 meters at Funabashi, then the Teio Sho over 2,000 at Ohi on June 25. In that Teio Sho, Furioso led throughout from stall one and beat Bonneville Record by a length and a half in 2:04.7. Both carried 57 kilograms. The runner-up was then JRA-trained, although Fumio Matoba, based in regional racing, rode him.
That combination is a useful warning against dividing every contest into two simple teams of horses and jockeys. A regional rider could partner a central horse against Furioso. The chart identifies the horse's affiliation separately from the rider's. Furioso's success belonged to Kawashima's Funabashi operation, while the people and opponents moving through the exchange program crossed its boundaries in several ways.
His 2009 season produced another Diolite Kinen win, but no top-level victory. Kane Hekili beat him in the Kawasaki Kinen; Vermilion beat him in the Teio Sho. In January 2010, with Mirco Demuro aboard, he was again second at Kawasaki, only 0.1 seconds behind Vermilion. Across three consecutive Kawasaki Kinen appearances he had finished second to three different winners: Field Rouge, Kane Hekili and Vermilion. The familiar runner-up position concealed a changing sequence of formidable opponents.
The 2010 peak: first Kane Hekili, then Transcend
The Teio Sho on June 30, 2010 assembled an especially revealing field. Success Brocken was favorite, Vermilion second choice, Smart Falcon third and Kane Hekili fourth. Furioso was fifth in the betting. The NAR chart records Tosaki keeping him close to Success Brocken's lead, second at the final three recorded corners, before winning by two and a half lengths from Kane Hekili.
Bonneville Record finished third, Smart Falcon sixth, Success Brocken eighth and Vermilion ninth. Furioso and those male rivals all carried 57 kilograms. This was a particularly substantial answer to his earlier defeats: he had beaten the two established champions who had frustrated him, as well as younger contenders, under equal weights. His time was 2:03.4 on slightly yielding dirt. It was his second Teio Sho, separated from the first by a season in which that same title had gone to Vermilion.
At home on September 23, the Nippon TV Hai supplied a different test over 1,800 meters. Transcend led, Furioso followed him, and Smart Falcon raced just behind the pair. Furioso won by two and a half lengths in 1:48.8, with Transcend narrowly retaining second from Smart Falcon. The winner carried 58 kilograms; both pursuers carried 56.
The weights sharpen the meaning of the result. Furioso was not using a concession to keep pace with visitors from the JRA. He conceded weight and passed a rival who had controlled the race in front. The performance also showed that his effective forward position could be second rather than first. Later defeats by these same horses should be read alongside this direct victory, not used to erase it.
Smart Falcon reversed the order in the JBC Classic at Funabashi that November and again in the Tokyo Daishoten in December. NAR's contemporary review of the latter race describes Smart Falcon insisting on the lead, with Furioso following in second. The winner's 2:00.4 was then a Japanese dirt 2,000-meter record; Furioso ran 2:00.7, a length and three-quarters behind. He had remained close in a historically fast race without being able to get past.
Kawasaki finally yielded; Tokyo asked a new question
After three consecutive seconds, Furioso finally won the Kawasaki Kinen on January 26, 2011. The circumstances require qualification. Smart Falcon did not run, and Testa Matta was withdrawn before the race. NAR's report from the meeting explains that the remaining JRA challengers were all making their graded-race debuts. This was not the same concentration of proven opposition he had beaten at Ohi the previous June.
He did what the market expected. Tosaki sent him to the front, and he won the 2,100-meter race by five lengths from Meisho Tametomo in 2:14.2. The victory settled an unfinished task at a familiar course. Its margin and ease were convincing, while the withdrawals mean it should not be presented as revenge over every horse responsible for his earlier runner-up finishes.
The February Stakes at Tokyo, twenty-five days later, offered almost the opposite assignment. Furioso's four previous JRA visits, including the two turf experiments, had produced no finish in the first five. Now seven, he returned with Demuro for a one-mile championship whose dirt course begins on turf. NAR's contemporary account records him losing position immediately on that opening stretch, then finding himself covered up and forced into a rearward race.
The report does not establish one certain cause. Kawashima questioned whether the problem was really the grass; timing at the break was another possibility. That uncertainty matters. Furioso's two poor turf races cannot prove that a short turf start alone caused this particular loss. What is documented is the effect: a horse accustomed to racing prominently had to recover from the back.
Transcend won in 1:36.4, a length and a half ahead of Furioso. The JRA result credits the runner-up with 1:36.6 and a 35.7-second final 600 meters, the fastest in the field. Furioso caught Birdie Birdie by a neck for second. All three carried 57 kilograms. His late recovery demonstrated a finishing capacity that his usual forward-running style rarely required him to display so conspicuously.
It was still Transcend's race. The winner had taken pressure near the lead and stayed in front, whereas Furioso's sectional described a different distribution of effort. The result supports a high-class performance in adversity, not a calculation that a better start would necessarily have produced victory. For an overseas audience familiar mainly with JRA championships, it was nevertheless a clear view of the ability routinely appearing on the regional circuit.
His sixth top-level win came at home
Tosaki was back aboard for the Kashiwa Kinen on May 5. Espoir City sought a third consecutive victory in the race and started favorite. NAR's race-day account records Espoir City briefly missing the break before recovering his position. Furioso started well, but Yutaka Take sent the mare La Verita ahead from the outside. The home horse settled third rather than contesting the lead immediately.
Furioso moved up approaching the final turn, with Espoir City following. In the straight, however, the persistent challenge came from La Verita on the inside. Furioso beat her by three-quarters of a length in 1:38.2; Espoir City was third. The expected duel between two male champions had become a victory earned against a mare who had made the running and refused to disappear from the finish.
The win completed eight consecutive first-or-second finishes, beginning with the previous year's Kashiwa Kinen. At seven, he had won two Jpn1 races in one year for the first time. The sequence included successes at 1,600, 1,800, 2,000 and 2,100 meters, with defeats by Espoir City, Smart Falcon and Transcend among the seconds. It was a sustained peak across different distances and strong opposition, not one favorable afternoon at his home track.
What regional racing lost when he retired
That peak did not continue uninterrupted. A planned September rematch with Smart Falcon in the Nippon TV Hai ended in Furioso's exclusion after tendon trouble. NAR's retirement feature records Kawashima acknowledging the physical difficulties of his later career. His final two seasons contained only three and four actual starts respectively. Longevity had required management of a vulnerable horse, not seven years without injury.
He returned in 2012, placing third in the Kawasaki Kinen and second in the Kashiwa Kinen, but won none of his four starts. His last appearance was sixth in the Tokyo Daishoten on December 29. By retirement he had earned NAR Horse of the Year honors in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011. The JBBA profile also lists an age-division award in every season from two through eight. The four overall titles belonged to regional racing's awards, not the separate JRA Horse of the Year election.
The following year's JBC meeting gave a contemporary measure of his absence. In a November 2013 review, Osamu Saito noted that the first three in the JBC Classic were JRA horses and that the best regional finisher was 2.7 seconds behind third. He argued that Furioso's retirement had particularly widened the central-regional gap in the middle-distance division. It was an assessment of that moment, not a permanent rule about every subsequent regional horse.
The comment helps explain why Furioso's many seconds carried weight with his audience. He repeatedly kept a regional stable in direct competition with the strongest central visitors. Some races he won, some he lost narrowly, and others exposed a clear superior. Across those changing outcomes, his presence made the contest between the two systems something that could be decided on the track rather than conceded beforehand.
A son won the Derby he had missed
Furioso arrived at Darley Japan's stallion complex on January 9, 2013, after a farewell ceremony at Funabashi. The JBBA arrival report records his breeders coming to see him soon after the journey. His next career began with substantial support: Darley's September 2016 breeding report states that he had covered more than a hundred mares in each of his first four seasons and had already supplied fifteen individual winners from his first crop.
Hikari Oso provided a particularly fitting success in 2019. A son of Furioso and the South Vigorous mare Hikari Vigorous, he won the Tokyo Derby at Ohi, the race his father had lost by a neck twelve years earlier. The breeder's account explains that Hikari Oso had missed the Haneda Hai after a poor preparatory run, then arrived at the Derby restored to form. The son took a different route to the prize, bringing Furioso's influence into the regional Classic program as a sire.
His working life at stud ended in 2024. A March 2025 NAR report traced the next move to CR Stable in Shinhidaka, run by the New Zealand-born horseman Chris and his wife. Chris had helped care for Furioso early in his racing career and had continued visiting him during his stallion years, bringing bananas. The report found the twenty-one-year-old receiving the same attentive grooming and daily care that his former handler associated with his racing days.
The reunion followed two long careers: seven racing seasons based at Funabashi and more than a decade at stud. When the commercial work was finished, Furioso went to someone who had known him before most of the championships. In that March account, the old handler's pleasure was straightforward: a horse he had cared for at the beginning was now spending retirement on his own farm.
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