Forever Young: “The History Maker”
Published 17th September 2026
Forever Young has already achieved immortality. The first Japanese trained winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The first dual winner of the Saudi Cup. The accolades alone write themselves. Bred at Northern Farm Stud in Hokkaido, Japan, Forever Young has brought so much success to his connections and for this feature article I have analysed TPD’s vast international database to help add further data-powered context.
I have started with the summary above, which looks at the leading in-race metrics recorded by Forever Young when he has run in the US so far. Each of those metrics in isolation would be on or above our expected average figures for a winner of a race like the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar.
His victory last November was doubtless his best performance in the US, but our data also offers an alternative view and that is that Forever Young managed to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic despite some of the data being stacked against him.
At an average of 24.27 ft, Forever Young’s stride length ranked only 6th of the 9 runner field at Del Mar in 2025 and was considerably shorter than the likes of Sierra Leone (2nd) and Journalism (4th) who chased him home. We often associate the 10-furlong trip on the dirt in the US with horses who have a long stride and who gallop their opposition into submission with abundant stamina in the home straight. Forever Young doesn’t fit that mold.
In fact, his average stride length figures are notably shorter than some of the other recent winners of the Breeders’ Cup Classic: Sierra Leone 25.28 ft (2024) and Flightline 25.47 ft (2023) when they ran over the 10 furlong trip at Del Mar. What sets Forever Young apart is his attitude and willingness to win. How can we measure that with data?
We can start by looking at his stride data. Let’s take the Breeders’ Cup Classic of 2025 as a working example…
Forever Young did not record the fastest furlong split in the field at any point in that race. The closest he came was when he recorded 12.07s for the penultimate furlong (ranked 2nd). His top speed ranked 4th, his average stride frequency was 3rd, his late speed was also 3rd and even his run-out speed, measured 2s after he crossed the winning line, was surpassed by the runner-up.
The individual data points were against him, but Forever Young is metronomic. The variance between his average and maximum stride length was just 0.86 ft, the smallest variance figure in the field. Forever Young gallops…relentlessly!
Whilst others need a fast pace in the early stages or tiring leaders to use as a target, Forever Young has shown himself to be adaptable and able to run his race regardless of how his opponents fair. Having hit the front around the turn, it could have been a long way home for Forever Young in the Del Mar straight and I’m sure it must have felt like the winning line was never coming to Ryusei Sakai. Plenty of horses felt the presence of Sierra Leone coming at them during his career and the vast majority wilted under the pressure, but not Forever Young. He found the reserves to match the 2024 winner’s long stride inside the final furlong and held on to land a famous victory for his jockey, his trainer, his owner and his country.
The Breeders’ Cup Classic was a great race, but I couldn’t write a piece about Forever Young without referring to “That Race”. I’ve written pieces about great races in countries all around the world, but in all my time working with Total Performance Data, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed watching and analysing a race as much as the 2025 Saudi Cup!
Romantic Warrior is the highest earning racehorse of all time. He won 24 races, 15 at Group 1 level and has recently retired at the end of a truly stellar career. He is a horse of a lifetime and when he loomed up alongside Forever Young in the home straight in Riyadh, the entire world surely felt that there was only going to be one winner of the 2025 Saudi Cup. The entire world, except for Forever Young!
He had other ideas as he rallied to get his nose down on the line and record a famous victory by just 0.05s. Romantic Warrior had recorded faster times for the preceding 3-furlong splits and appeared to have come with a winning run. He was 0.15s in front when they passed the furlong pole, but somehow, Forever Young found the energy to run a faster final furlong to win by the narrowest of margins. The pair finished 10 lengths clear of the remainder of the field and I wrote at the time that “it must surely be argued that this is also the best race on dirt ever to take place outside the US”. More than 18 months on from that race, I have seen nothing that could dissuade me from that viewpoint.
Here you can enjoy a replay of the race overlayed with TPD performance insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfmsHVgfanU
Forever Young is due to make his return in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at the newly redeveloped Belmont Park in New York this week on his was to an attempted defense of his Breeders’ Cup Crown at Keeneland.
Whatever happens this autumn, Forever Young has already cemented his name as one of the all-time greats from Japan. I write about a lot of Grade 1 winners in my role as an analyst. Sometimes we marvel at their top speed, or their gate speed, or their long stride or their endless stamina. With Forever Young, we instead marvel at his ruthless consistency.
His ability to run his race wherever he goes…his ability to defy convention or “break the mold” if you will. The hero of Japanese Racing has taken the world by storm, and it is a privilege to record his data around the racing world.