Like with Northern Taste, the choice to bring Sunday Silence to Japan wasn’t met without ridicule.
In America, that is. In Japan everyone was shocked that a horse with SIX G1 victories would be imported so early and so easily. Remember that very often, horses are purchased before debut for a reason and horses become more expensive after they’ve proven themselves.
Japanese critics did remain as divided as the American ones on the probability of his success as a stallion though, but there were many hopeful that if paired with a good mare, the fierceness of Sunday Silence could be tempered in a different way. Though skepticism of if he’d surpass Northern Taste or Tony Bin remained still.
None were as excited before or afterwards than the Yoshida family, though.
Author Ryo Yoshikawa was with Zenya Yoshida when he saw a video of the Preakness Stakes and recalls him saying he had to get involved with this horse, that his biggest job yet was awaiting him. He just FELT like his destiny laid with this creature.
This might’ve also been influenced by the fact that Dictus, Shadai’s other main stallion not related to Northern Taste had died in 1989 and a replacement was needed.
Hancock actually recalls that Zenya’s obsession with Sunday Silence was palpable, and he wasn’t the only one, since after the Breeder’s Cup Teruya basically asked Hancock on the spot to sell him the horse.
Sadly, Zenya Yoshida passed away in 1993 at age 72 so he didn’t get to see the debut of the first batch of Sunday Silence descendants in 1994, who accumulated 30 wins (including 4 major wins) in 6 months.
And it didn’t stop from there, not only that but Sunday Silence was so energic that he was able to keep up with the demand. Breeders tended to believe that breeding a stallion 100 times a year was overworking them and here was this hellspawn from America going 200 times a year. In 2001 he was reported to have bred 224 times in a single year.
You could say he was a Fucker.
This set a precedent that it was possible for a stallion to breed that much and it also resulted in a situation of extremes where leading sires would be booked a lot and those less in demand would be dropped faster.
And this is where the topic of the controversy of how prominent Sunday Silence’s blood had become can be focused on. After all, we’re talking a horse that remained as Leading Sire, and not only that but a RECORD BREAKING Leading Sire for 12 years (1995 to 2007) and Leading Broodmare Sire for 11 (2007 to 2018).
SUNDAY SILENCE DIED IN 2002 BY THE BY.
On one hand, it was undeniable that the Sunday Silence blood improved Japanese horse racing dramatically. Sunday Silence’s blood carries ferocity with itself (from his father Halo, who was known to bite EVEN MORE), alongside a very smooth style of running, skill when cutting corners, and exponential growth in training. Many Jockeys have reported an impressive eyesight too.
It was often noted that compared to Easy Goer, who was a force to be reckoned in long races and especially long straight lines; Sunday Silence could cut corners like no other. Which often came attached to how not many of his direct descendants looked impressive but still had impressive muscles and bone structure.
Indeed, there’s even cases where the ferocity seemed to not be able to be witheld by a frail mortal body. For the most famous example, Silence Suzuka is theorized to have broken his leg so badly because he ran so fast that his body couldn’t keep up dampening the impact of the turf in the leg, and in a less dramatic example Marvelous Sunday ran so fast as a calf while playing that he also broke his leg in the process.
And he came in at the perfect time, it was perceived by the 90s that the quality of breeding stallions in Japan (mind you: that is in breeding, not in racing) had diminished and many foreign stallions were brought in, often seeing more legacy than locally bred ones. But Sunday Silence descendants were so desirable that the local horses saw a resurgence.
The problem, however, was that the blood was so prominent that the risk of inbreeding and the pool of diversity grew thin with each batch of descendants.
An argument was made that if this was a problem it would be a temporary one at best as Sunday Silence descendants go from first generation to second and third and so on. But even with this in mind, a certain… feudalism, a certain aristocracy was set, where you either had Sunday Silence blood or you didn’t.
The first sign of this was actually in the 2004 Shuuka Sho (the last race of the Triple Tiara) where 11 of the participants, all fillies, were descended from Sunday Silence one way or another.
By the way, the Main Story chapter they just announced as of this writing (02/2024) is set in 2005, and the four girls (Rhein Kraft, Cesario, Air Messiah, and Daring Heart) are all related to Sunday Silence.
This all came to a head in the 2011 Nihon Derby where all 18 participants had Sunday Silence blood in one way or another.
And let me illustrate it by using Uma Musume as an example.
As I joked about a couple of posts ago, 27 out of 105 girls in the cast are related to Sunday Silence, with 12 being direct descendants.
Let’s break those numbers for fun.
Direct descendants:
- Special Week
- Silence Suzuka
- Fuji Kiseki
- Manhattan Cafe
- Agnes Tachyon
- Admire Vega
- Air Shakur
- Zenno Rob Roy
- Marvelous Sunday
- Neo Universe
- Air Messiah
- Daring Heart
Second Generation:
- Gold Ship (via Stay Gold)
- Daiwa Scarlet (via Agnes Tachyon)
- Smart Falcon (via Gold Allure)
- Nakayama Festa (via Stay Gold)
- Satono Diamond (via Deep Impact)
- Kitasan Black (via Black Tide)
- Cheval Grand (via Heart’s Cry)
- Verxina (via Deep Impact)
- Vivlos (via Deep Impact)
- Coppano Rickey (via Gold Allure)
- Sounds of Earth (via Neo Universe)
- Duramente (via Admire Groove, its mother)
- Rhein Kraft (via End Sweep)
- Cesario (via Special Week)
Then Daring Tact is both third AND fourth generation Sunday Silence descendant (being related to both Cesario and Daring Heart)… but rather than being bad, 3×4 inbreeding is known as the Miracle Ratio which is a whole different topic for a different post.
So, we go back to the question: With this precedent, how could Uma Musume add Sunday Silence to the game? Is it possible even?
And they have! Kinda, sorta. In fact, it’s my favorite detail in the whole game bar none and the sole motivation for this batch of posts.
But to explain in detail what they did and why it’s my favorite thing, we have to make a quick (and I do mean quick, I’m aware about how much I’ve been teasing this topic) detour and talk about a certain girl.
A girl haunted by a ghost that, even in Uma Musume, remains.