Little Snow at Northern Farm

There will be plenty of upcoming posts -- plus features in North American Trainer and Thoroughbred Daily News (TDN) -- from my trip with Inkmarksofsu to Northern Farm in Hokkaido, Japan. In the meantime, here are some photos I can’t resist posting of Yukichan, Zazu, and Tapitsfly.

Bred by Northern Farm, Yukichan is one of few registered white Thoroughbreds and the only one, to my knowledge, to have won a stakes race (she is a dual stakes winner in Japan). She is a 2005 daughter of gray stallion Kurofune out of the white mare Shirayukihime, whose name translates to Snow White in English. Shirayukihime was sired by the near-black Sunday Silence and is out of a bay Topsider mare.

The first foal out of Yukichan (translation per my new friend Noriko Takahashi: Little Yuki, Yuki being both a woman’s name and the Japanese word for snow), a 2012 filly by King Kamehameha, is bay, but her second foal, the 2013 Harbinger filly shown here, is white.

Optical illusion...how many horses do you see?

Yukichan (right) and her Harbinger filly.

Multiple Grade 1 winners Zazu and Tapitsfly, who are not quite white but gray or roan like their sire Tapit, were purchased by Northern Farm last November and exported to Japan. More info (i.e. what they are in foal to for 2014) will appear in the TDN.

Zazu (left) and Tapitsfly.