I only learned of Admire Moon last year, reading about the 2007 Dubai Duty Free win while researching Japanese racing history for a piece I never finished. Strange to feel something for a horse you never saw run. Twenty three years old. Rest well.
Their story
Admire Moon was a Japanese Thoroughbred who rose from a mid-market yearling to Japanese Horse of the Year, capturing the 2007 Dubai Duty Free, Takarazuka Kinen and Japan Cup in a four-year-old campaign that still ranks among the finest of the modern JRA era. Foaled on 23 February 2003 at…
Admire Moon was a Japanese Thoroughbred who rose from a mid-market yearling to Japanese Horse of the Year, capturing the 2007 Dubai Duty Free, Takarazuka Kinen and Japan Cup in a four-year-old campaign that still ranks among the finest of the modern JRA era.
Foaled on 23 February 2003 at Northern Farm in Abira, Hokkaido, he was bred by Katsumi Yoshida from End Sweep out of the Sunday Silence mare My Katies. At the 2003 JHRA Select Sale he was purchased by Riichi Kondo for 16 million yen and sent to trainer Hiroyoshi Matsuda at Ritto. He broke his maiden at Hakodate as a two-year-old, then took the Clover Sho and the Grade 3 Sapporo Nisai Stakes before finishing second in the Radio Tampa Hai Nisai Stakes.
As a three-year-old in 2006 he won the Kyodo News Service Hai and the Yayoi Sho, then ran fourth in the Satsuki Sho and seventh in the Tokyo Yushun behind Meisho Samson. That summer he captured the Grade 2 Sapporo Kinen. He finished third in the autumn Tenno Sho and travelled to Sha Tin for the Hong Kong Cup, where he was beaten a nose by Pride. The international experience set up the following season.
In 2007 he opened with a win in the Kyoto Kinen, then flew to Dubai and won the Group 1 Dubai Duty Free Stakes at Nad Al Sheba under Yutaka Take. After a third in Hong Kong's Queen Elizabeth II Cup he returned for the Takarazuka Kinen, ridden by Yasunari Iwata, and beat a field that included Vodka and Daiwa Major. Mid-year Godolphin bought him from Kondo for a reported 4 billion yen. He closed his career in the Japan Cup at Tokyo, winning by a head from Pop Rock, and retired with ten wins from seventeen starts.
Named Japanese Horse of the Year and champion older male for 2007, he stood at Darley Japan and later sired Grade 1 sprinters Fine Needle and Seiun Kosei, both winners of the Takamatsunomiya Kinen. Pensioned after the 2024 covering season, he spent his final years at Darley Japan in Hidaka. Darley announced his death from illness in September 2026 at age twenty-three. Dubai Racing Club and Japanese racing media remembered a horse whose overseas courage and Japan Cup farewell had become part of the sport's collective memory.
Biography adapted from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Darley Japan announcement via X (7 Sep 2026); Racing Post; Nikkan Sports; Sanspo ZBAT; BloodHorse; netkeiba; JBIS.
In their own words
“A great horse forever etched in our hearts.”
Dubai Racing Club tribute (via Racing Post / Nikkan Sports)
“He retires a champion whose Dubai, Takarazuka and Japan Cup triple defined Japanese racing in 2007.”
Paraphrase of contemporary JRA and BloodHorse coverage of his Horse of the Year season
Photos
2Admire Moon on a winning run after the 2007 Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse
by People Forever
Admire Moon at Tokyo Racecourse, 29 October 2006
by People Forever
same, found him through an old JRA highlight reel and couldn't stop watching