Another Try for Taiki Blizzard

The last time Taiki Blizzard raced outside of Japan, he made a 39-hour quarantine stop in the Big Apple, then never found another apple he liked.

That was last year, when the son of Seattle Slew was sent via New York to Toronto for the Breeders’ Cup. Visitors who peeked inside Taiki Blizzard’s stall at Woodbine saw dozens of partly eaten apples strewn on the floor. Neither American nor Canadian apples appealed to the horse. The ones back home, the Japanese said, seemed sweeter.

“At Woodbine,” Nobutaka Tada was saying, “he did not eat anything, including people. In California, he has been doing much better. He even likes the American apples now.”

Tada is the racing manager for Taiki Farm, the Tokyo outfit that has syndicated hundreds of horses for racing since its inception in 1989.

Whether Taiki Blizzard ever gets an appetite for North American racing remains to be seen.

Last year’s trip to the Breeders’ Cup was a disaster. Taiki Blizzard was entered in the Classic, a 1 1/4-mile dirt race. He was undefeated on dirt, but had run on that surface only twice. Perhaps because of the soft ground, he broke slowly in the Classic, was squeezed by horses leaving the gate and finished last in a field of 13, beaten by 27 lengths.

“We do not consider last a year a mistake,” Tada said. “It was just a step to where we are now.”

Where they are is at Santa Anita, to run on grass today in the $250,000 Oak Tree Breeders’ Cup Mile. This is to be followed by another Breeders’ Cup try--but this time on grass--in the Mile at Hollywood Park on Nov. 8.

The vibes are much better than they were last fall for Yoshiki Akazawa, the USC-educated president of Taiki Farm; trainer Kazuo Fujisawa and their 49-year-old jockey, Yukio Okabe, who has won more races in Japan than anybody else.

Taiki Blizzard, a 6-year-old bred in Kentucky by Akazawa, a hotel-management executive who lives in Tokyo, has been training at Hollywood Park for nearly a month. In his final workout for today’s race, he turned in a sparkling 1:00 1/5 for five furlongs, and on Friday, getting acclimated to Santa Anita, Okabe booted home a winner in the third race.

“In Canada, Taiki Blizzard lost about 15 kilos [more than 30 pounds] before the race,” Tada said. “Since he’s been here, he has put on weight. After his bad start at Woodbine, he put up no fight. The rider thought that his workout Wednesday was great. He is going into these races in much better condition. He is much more mature now.”

Because purses in Japan are obscenely high, Taiki Blizzard’s earnings make the seven other horses in the Oak Tree Mile look like pikers. With six wins, eight seconds and one third in 20 starts, Taiki Blizzard has earned $5.5 million. The rest of today’s field has earned $2.1 million. Skip Away, who has earned more than any other U.S. horse in training, has $3.9 million.

Fourth in the 1995 Japan Cup, Taiki Blizzard has won two of three starts this year, including the biggest victory of his career in the seven-furlong Jasuda Kinen Stakes, a Grade I race in Japan that drew a crowd of 136,000 on June 8. Since then, he has finished fourth at 1 3/8 miles, in a stake that he led with an eighth of a mile left.

“A mile is his best distance,” Tada said. “He was very tired after the Breeders’ Cup last year, and we considered retiring him. But he has recovered this year.”

Horse Racing Notes

Souvenir Copy and Old Topper, 1-2 in the Del Mar Futurity and among the favorites for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Hollywood Park on Nov. 8, head the seven-horse field for Sunday’s $200,000 Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita. Others running in the one-mile race are Old Trieste, Double Honor, The Cynic, Clover Hunter and Yarrow Brae. . . . Undefeated Favorite Trick, the early favorite for the Juvenile, shoots for his seventh consecutive victory today in the $400,000 Lane’s End Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland. Favorite Trick will be making his first start around two turns in the 1 1/16-mile race.