Shinko Lovely ran her two Mile Championships over the same 1,600 metres of Kyoto turf. She was favourite on both occasions, with Yukio Okabe in the saddle. In 1992 she ran 1:33.5 and lost. In 1993 she ran 1:35.7 and won. The slower performance brought her the only Grade 1 victory of her career, and it came in her last race. The two clocks are a useful place to begin: the conditions under which she ran, and the kind of race she was asked to run, changed a great deal in twelve months.
To see how the Irish-bred mare came to be favourite twice, it helps to start with a race missing from her record. In the spring of 1992, Japan had a mile classic for three-year-old fillies and an obvious candidate in a filly who had already placed in a top-level juvenile mile. Shinko Lovely could not enter. She found a different mile at Tokyo in June, and by November she was taking on Japan's defending mile champion after a race only seven days earlier.
The spring mile she could not run
Foaled in Ireland in 1989, Shinko Lovely was bred by B. R. and Mrs Firestone and raced in Japan for Osamu Yasuda, in Kazuo Fujisawa's Miho stable. Her sire was Caerleon, her dam Happy Trails, and her broodmare sire Posse. The JRA's horse register marks her as foreign-bred. That label concerns where she was born: she was trained in Japan, made her debut there and never raced abroad. The distinction matters because the restriction that shaped her programme applied to horses like her, regardless of where their training took place.
She won her first two starts, then finished third behind Nishino Flower in the 1991 Hanshin Sansai Himba Stakes, the race now called the Hanshin Juvenile Fillies. Old charts use Japan's former way of numbering ages, in which a horse in its first calendar year was counted as one. The two fillies listed as three at Hanshin were two by today's convention. Both turned three the following spring, when Nishino Flower won the Oka Sho, Japan's equivalent of the 1,000 Guineas.
The JRA's history of the Oka Sho dates admission of foreign-bred horses to 2004. Its Oaks history gives 2003 for that race. Both histories separately give 2010 for international status, a distinction between allowing imports trained domestically and opening a race to horses trained abroad. In 1992, neither spring fillies' classic was open to Shinko Lovely. Her absence says nothing about whether she could have beaten Nishino Flower in a rematch or stayed the Oaks distance. It does explain why a reader following the classic results alone would miss most of her three-year-old season.
Her first race that year came in May, in the Carnation Cup at Tokyo, where she ran sixth as favourite. It was the only time she finished outside the first three. On June 7 she returned over the same mile in the New Zealand Trophy Yonsai Stakes. The favourite was Hishi Masaru, an American-bred colt by Secretariat. Shinko Lovely, fourth choice in the betting, beat him by a length and a half, carrying 54 kilograms to his 56. In the mid-1990s this June mile still had the place in the calendar that the NHK Mile Cup later took over, as JRA-VAN's history of foreign-bred runners explains. The race name on a modern card is familiar, but its role in her spring was different: this was already a destination for a good miler shut out of the classics.
Her next two starts also show why it would be a mistake to imagine her as a filly limited to that distance. In July she won the 1,800-metre Radio Tampa Sho at Fukushima under Katsumi Sakamoto; in October she won the Queen Stakes at Nakayama under Okabe over 2,000 metres. The latter was a race for her own age and sex and was run over 200 metres farther than the modern Queen Stakes at Sapporo. Her route had taken her from a mile at Tokyo to two right-handed courses and across three distances. What it had yet to establish was how that form would hold up against older horses in a championship.
Two Kyoto miles, two different races
Fujisawa's filly won the Fuji Stakes at Tokyo on November 15, 1992. The Fuji was then an open race over 1,800 metres; it was not the graded autumn mile familiar to today's followers. The next Sunday she was at Kyoto for the 1992 Mile Championship. Daitaku Helios was defending his title and drew the outside stall in a field of 18. Shinko Lovely was the favourite after four straight wins. Her schedule had put a Tokyo win and a test against the defending champion in the same week.
The JRA chart puts Helios in the front group at the third turn and alone in front by the fourth. Shinko Lovely was in the group immediately behind the leaders at the earlier call and in the next cluster as they straightened. The last 600 metres of the race took 35.2 seconds on good turf. Helios won by a length and a half in a recorded 1:33.3, with Shinko Lovely second in 1:33.5. Nice Nature was another length back in third; Yamanin Zephyr, who had already won his first Yasuda Kinen that May, was fifth. One week after winning over an extra 200 metres, the three-year-old had finished closer to the defending champion than any of the older challengers.
When Shinko Lovely returned in November 1993, Helios and Yamanin Zephyr were absent, and the ground was rated furyō, the wettest of the JRA's four categories. The official chart shows her bracketed with Toyo Lyphard behind the first two at both turn calls. Iide Zao, who led at those calls, stayed on for second; Shinko Lovely passed him and won by a length and a quarter. The race took 36.5 seconds for its final 600 metres. The last 200 took 12.6, against 12.2 a year earlier. These are race fractions, rather than individual closing splits, and the two editions had different fields as well as different going. What they show is the change in the task: she had to run down a leader who was still good enough to finish second, with the race slowing in the final furlong on rain-soaked ground.
That helps explain why there is no useful arithmetic in subtracting the 1992 runner-up time from her winning time. Her first Kyoto mile required staying in range of a champion who had the speed to put the field under pressure on good turf. The second rewarded a handy position and the ability to finish through much wetter ground. In both she was close enough to challenge without having to come from the back of the field. The year she won also gave her almost three weeks between her previous start and the championship. It is possible to account for all these differences without having to assume that a faster clock, a different preparation or any single change explains the result by itself.
What the three Tokyo meetings show
Shinko Lovely's rivalry with Yamanin Zephyr had an unusually helpful feature for anyone trying to place her among the horses of the period. In 1993 they met over 1,400, 1,600 and 1,800 metres at Tokyo, all on going the Japanese charts call good. The spring races went to Zephyr. In the Keio Hai Spring Cup on April 24 he conceded four kilograms and beat her by a length and a half over 1,400 metres. In the Yasuda Kinen on May 16 he won by a length and a quarter from Ikuno Dictus, with Shinko Lovely a nose behind the runner-up. The mile chart gives the same 1:33.7 to the horses placed second through fifth; her third reflects a close finish for the places, with a clear winner in front of them.
At the Mainichi Okan on October 10, the weights and distance both changed. Shinko Lovely carried 56 kilograms, runner-up Sekitei Ryu O 57 and Yamanin Zephyr 59. She set a recorded 1:45.5 over 1,800 metres, beating Sekitei Ryu O by a length and three-quarters, with Nice Nature third and Zephyr sixth. She had already won a race at the distance at Sapporo in June. At Tokyo the same distance gave her a way to turn good spring form into a decisive result against a deeper field than the one she had beaten at Sapporo.
The next Tokyo Grade 1 is a useful check on what we infer. Three weeks later, over 2,000 metres in the Tenno Sho (Autumn), Zephyr beat Sekitei Ryu O by a nose at level weights; Shinko Lovely did not run. The Mainichi Okan cannot be used to award her a hypothetical Tenno Sho, or to mark Zephyr down as a horse who needed a shorter trip. It does show that she put daylight between herself and a horse who nearly won the autumn's major 2,000-metre race at the same track. That is unusually useful evidence for the quality of her 1,800-metre form. The extra distance at Tokyo gave the two rivals another way to meet, and the answer was different that day.
By the time Zephyr won the Tenno Sho, Shinko Lovely had already run again, at Kyoto the day before. In the Swan Stakes she went from 1,800 metres on good turf to 1,400 on heavy turf in twenty days. At 56 kilograms she held Stage Hero by a neck, with both timed in 1:21.9. Nishino Flower, carrying 57, finished third. Nishino Flower had beaten her at Hanshin as a juvenile, and Shinko Lovely had finished ahead of her in the Yasuda Kinen that spring. The Swan gave a closer comparison than their spring mile because both mares were in contention for the win. When Shinko Lovely won the Mile Championship three weeks later, she had won on both courses, at three distances, in three different going categories that autumn.
What passed down to Lady Muse
Fujisawa's first Grade 1 winner retired on a run of four consecutive victories. The JRA records her removal from the racing register on November 25, 1993, four days after her Kyoto win. The final line reads ten wins from fifteen starts, with two seconds and two thirds. The JRA awards named her the year's champion older female, alongside Yamanin Zephyr as champion older male and champion sprinter or miler. Fujisawa topped the trainers' wins table that year, and the JRA's Hall of Fame profile begins its list of his Grade 1 winners with Shinko Lovely, before horses such as Taiki Shuttle and Symboli Kris S. Her win came early enough in his career to be a starting point for that list, although she had already reached the end of hers.
Her family offers a particularly direct sequel to the missing spring of 1992. Her daughter Lady Muse, by Timber Country and foaled in Japan, ran second in the Tulip Sho and fourth in the Japanese Oaks, according to the JRA's sale catalogue. The imported dam had never been eligible for the Oaks. Her locally born daughter could take her chance while the same restriction still applied to imports. Lady Muse's fourth tells us what Lady Muse did over 2,400 metres. It leaves the question of her mother's stamina at that distance where it belongs: open.
Other branches of the family went in different directions. Lord Cronos, Shinko Lovely's son by Tony Bin, won the Chukyo Kinen and ran second in the Tanabata Sho. Lady Muse's daughter Shimmei Fuji, by Fuji Kiseki, won the Niigata Nisai Stakes on turf and the Kanto Oaks on dirt. The links are set out in the JBIS female-family record and the Hokkaido sale catalogue. Shimmei Fuji's Kanto Oaks was at Kawasaki, a separate race from the JRA's Tokyo Oaks in which her dam ran fourth. The family therefore appears in the histories of two different Oaks, one on turf and one on dirt, after beginning in Japan with a mare whose birthplace had kept her out of the spring classics.
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