Auguste Rodin: they don't make Derby winners like that anymore

Six days before the Derby at Epsom, the Japanese version was run the previous weekend but this year there was something that had become very familiar missing from the line-up at Tokyo - a runner sired by Deep Impact. His absence in that capacity was striking from a race which he had won himself in 2005 on the way to completing Japan’s triple crown and had dominated as a stallion in recent years. Seven years after his own victory, Deep Impact sired his first winner of the Japanese Derby, Deep Brillante, and six more followed, including four in a row between 2018 and 2021. He also sired the first three home in 2016.

As well as his first Japanese Derby winner in 2012, Deep Impact also sired his first Japan Cup winner that same year, the filly Gentildonna, and became assured of his first Japanese sires’ championship as a result. He has been champion sire there ever since, though his last four titles have been won posthumously as he died in July 2019.

Health issues restricted the number of mares Deep Impact was able to cover in what turned out to be his last year at stud, resulting in a very small final crop of three-year-olds this year and that lack of representation in the Japanese Derby. But, remarkably, from a final crop seemingly numbering just a dozen horses at most, it turned out that Deep Impact still had not only one final Derby runner, but also another winner, not at Tokyo this time but at Epsom.

The rarity value of Auguste Rodin certainly wasn’t lost on his trainer Aidan O’Brien who described the colt he’s often referred to in interviews as ‘Augustus’ as ‘a collector’s item’. As a racehorse, Deep Impact failed to live up to expectations – including those of thousands of his travelling Japanese fans who virtually broke the tote such was their support for him at Longchamp – when he was only third past the post (and then later disqualified) in the Arc on his sole appearance in Europe, one of only two defeats he suffered in fourteen starts.

WATCH: Auguste Rodin's victory in the Betfred Derby

But as a stallion, Deep Impact’s success in Japan was hard for breeders in Europe to ignore. French-based mare owners were among the first to take advantage and enjoyed classic success as a result. Ecurie Wildenstein won the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches in 2012 with Deep Impact’s daughter Beauty Parlour and six years later his son Study of Man won the Prix du Jockey Club in the Niarchos family colours.

Coolmore sent their first mares to Deep Impact in 2013 as, with few suitable candidates closer to home, he provided a top-class mating option for mares by their own version of Deep Impact, Galileo. One such mare was Maybe, the winner of all five of her starts at two, notably the Moyglare Stud Stakes, and later third in the 1000 Guineas and fifth in the Oaks. Her second visit to Deep Impact resulted in Saxon Warrior who, like Auguste Rodin, won the Futurity Trophy at Doncaster. However, the two colts enjoyed contrasting fortunes in the classics, Saxon Warrior winning the 2000 Guineas which resulted in him starting odds on for the Derby in which he could only finish fourth.

Maybe is also responsible for one of Deep Impact’s final-crop colts and, just a week before the Derby, Saxon Warrior’s brother Drumroll, a King Edward VII Stakes entry at Royal Ascot, was awarded the Gallinule Stakes at the Curragh. Another daughter of Galileo to visit Deep Impact was Oaks runner-up Rhododendron, with Auguste Rodin being her first foal. After Saxon Warrior, the combination of Deep Impact and a daughter of Galileo proved the winning formula for classic success again when the ill-fated Snowfall completed an Oaks treble in 2021. She was out of Best In The World, a smart sister to 2016 Arc winner Found.

Another member of Deep Impact’s final crop bred on similar lines and very much in the ‘collector’s item’ category – and in Coolmore hands – is the as yet unraced filly Victorium. She’s out of 2016 Oaks winner Minding, a better filly than Rhododendron, Maybe or Best In The World.

What would the horsemen of the Derby’s early years in the late-eighteenth century have made of the idea that the great race would one day be won by a colt sired by a Japanese stallion? Even in the late twentieth century that would have seemed just as unlikely a prospect. By then, Japan was part of the wider bloodstock world but, rather than being a source of Derby heroes, it was often an export market (some might say dumping ground in the case of those less fashionably bred) for many of its winners. At one time or another the Derby winners of the 1980s/90s Secreto, Shahrastani (and the unlucky runner-up at Epsom that year, Dancing Brave), Generous, Dr Devious, Commander In Chief, Erhaab, Lammtarra, High-Rise and Oath all stood in Japan.

The Far East wasn’t just an export market for Derby winners at Epsom. Kentucky Derby winner and US Horse of the Year Sunday Silence was also among the stallions who found his way to Japan, after proving surplus to requirements in the States, but unlike his Epsom counterparts he became phenomenally successful in his new home, a legacy he passed on to his son Deep Impact.

Apart from being by an American sire, you only have to scratch the surface of Deep Impact’s pedigree to find European – and even Epsom – connections on his dam’s side. Like Auguste Rodin, Deep Impact was also out of an Oaks runner-up; Wind In Her Hair finished second at Epsom in 1994 behind the Frankie Dettori-ridden Balanchine. The remarkable Wind In Her Hair, now aged 32, has outlived her brilliant son and makes fairly frequent appearances on twitter in retirement in Japan. As well as Deep Impact, her foals included his full brother Black Tide who sired Japan’s dual Horse of the Year Kitasan Black, himself now sire of reigning Horse of the Year Equinox who made such a big impression to a wider audience when winning the Dubai Sheema Classic in March.

Wind In Her Hair is from a famous family which had success firstly for the Queen and later for Sheikh Hamdan and Shadwell. It’s that of 1989 Derby winner Nashwan (significantly, an Epsom winner from that era who didn’t end up in the Far East), while in recent seasons Baaeed is another top-class colt to emerge from it; his brother Hukum won the Coronation Cup at Epsom last year.

Being out of a Group 1-winning daughter of Galileo – Rhododendron was raced over shorter trips after her defeat to Enable at Epsom, winning the Prix de l’Opera and the Lockinge – is also very much part of what makes Auguste Rodin a collector’s item. He’s the first Derby winner out of a daughter of Galileo but you wouldn’t want to bet on him being the last. Galileo’s stallion sons New Approach, Frankel and Nathaniel have all already sired Derby winners of their own, but although their ‘old man’ died in 2021, Deep Impact’s success this year, almost four years after his own death, is a reminder that there is time yet for Galileo to add to his record five Derby winners.

Galileo was represented in Saturday’s field by Artistic Star a day after his daughter Savethelastdance finished second (is she too destined for great things as a broodmare, therefore?!) in her bid to become her sire’s sixth Oaks winner. It won’t be much longer before the absence of a colt sired by Galileo from the Epsom Derby leaves as much of a hole as Deep Impact did from not being represented in the latest Japanese Derby. But we’re not quite there yet.

Galileo’s foals born in 2021 could yet supply a candidate or two for next year’s Derby and the case of Auguste Rodin suggests it would be dangerous to rule out even a final runner in the 2025 Derby – Galileo’s final crop, like Deep Impact’s, reportedly only numbers a dozen individuals.

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