Oju Chosan and the Nakayama Grand Jump: The Horse Who Won It Six Times

Between 2016 and 2022, one horse came to define Japan’s biggest jumps race. Oju Chosan won the Nakayama Grand Jump six times, a level of dominance rarely seen in steeplechasing anywhere in the world.

Run over a demanding figure-of-eight course and often likened to the Aintree Grand National, the race became closely tied to his name for the best part of a decade.

From flat also-ran to jumps king

Foaled on 3 April 2011, Oju Chosan started life without any hint of legend.

By Stay Gold, a top-class stayer and influential stallion, out of Symboli Kris S mare Shadow Silhouette, he had a pedigree more commonly associated with middle-distance flat horses than specialist chasers.

His first two starts on the flat at Tokyo in 2013 produced 11th and 8th, and a subsequent leg fracture kept him off the track for a year, effectively closing off the sort of maiden races that might have helped him find his level.

Connections switched him to the jumps in late 2014, and it was anything but an instant success. He was tailed off on his first steeplechase start.

The key changes were trainer and rider, the horse moving to Shoichiro Wada, with Shinichi Ishigami becoming his regular partner, and from there his progress was steady rather than spectacular until everything clicked in the spring of 2016.

2016: the first Grand Jump

By April 2016, Oju Chosan had learned his craft well enough to tackle the Nakayama Grand Jump, a 4,250-metre test over the figure-of-eight course that mixes brush fences, banks and the famous big hedge in front of the stands.

Sent off at relatively respectful odds behind the favourite, he travelled quietly before swooping past late to win his first J-G1, announcing himself as Japan’s new steeplechase star.

That initial Grand Jump success sparked a remarkable streak. From the spring of 2016 he went on to win 11 steeplechases in a row, including the autumn Nakayama Daishogai and the major G2 trials, and he would eventually rack up 18 wins from 31 jump starts.

For a horse whose first appearance over fences had ended in last place, it was quite a turnaround, the sort of formline that makes handicappers rub their eyes and fans quickly learn a new name.

2017: backing it up

Defending any big staying chase is hard enough. Doing it at Nakayama, where the fences come thick and fast and tactical mistakes are punished, is harder still.

In 2017, Oju Chosan returned for his second Nakayama Grand Jump as a much shorter price, carrying the expectations that come with being champion and the weight of a growing fanbase.

He delivered with something to spare, adding a second Grand Jump to go with another Nakayama Daishogai later that year, and setting a speed record in the December race over 4,100 metres.

That season essentially confirmed the new order. The horse in Chosan Co.’s colours was no longer a nice story, but the benchmark by which every other Japanese jumper was judged.

2018: the hat-trick and a record

By 2018, the pattern felt familiar. Hanshin Spring Jump in March, then on to Nakayama in April for the main event. Oju Chosan again used the G2 as a dress rehearsal, winning the Hanshin race, before lining up for his third consecutive Nakayama Grand Jump.

This was perhaps his most emphatic Grand Jump performance, making light of the 4,250 metres and stopping the clock in a race-record time.

The hat-trick placed him in the rarest company, matching the type of dominance that Red Rum and Tiger Roll showed at Aintree in their eras, even if the courses and configurations are very different. It also underlined a simple truth about the horse. He was not just durable, but still improving at eight.

2019: four in a row

If three wins can be dismissed as a streak, four consecutive victories start to look like a monopoly. In 2019, Oju Chosan returned as a nine-year-old and made the Grand Jump feel almost routine, winning the race for the fourth straight year.

Photographs from that day show Ishigami sitting coolly as his partner wings the last, almost as if the pair had agreed that this was just another schooling spin around their favourite playground.

That 2019 success extended his unbeaten run over jumps to 13 races, a sequence that stretched back to his first Grand Jump and included every major JRA steeplechase prize worth winning.

In a discipline where heavy falls, tired legs and younger legs usually find a way to interrupt even the best horses, the sheer continuity of his form was as striking as the trophies themselves.

2020: the historic fifth

The 2020 Nakayama Grand Jump took place in a season overshadowed by the pandemic, but on the track the familiar figure of Oju Chosan delivered a piece of history.

Now a ten-year-old, he lined up seeking a fifth consecutive win and, despite the wear and tear of years at the top, he again mastered the course to secure an unprecedented fifth Grand Jump.

That win pushed his career earnings beyond £5.7 million, making him the world’s highest-earning jumper at the time, and offered a reminder that Japanese prize-money structures can make a top steeplechaser an extraordinarily valuable asset.

In pure steeplechase terms, he now stood alone. No other horse had ever won five editions of the race, let alone in succession.

2021: the streak ends

All streaks, even the most improbable, end somewhere.

In 2021, stepping out for a tilt at a sixth consecutive Grand Jump, Oju Chosan finished only fifth behind Meisho Dassai, beaten just under 15 lengths. Age, younger rivals, and the simple reality of jump racing finally caught up with him on Grand Jump day, and for once the old partner looked a little short of his usual late kick.

Yet even in defeat there was context. He was now an 11-year-old who had been operating at the top tier of Japanese steeplechasing for more than half a decade, and the fact he was still lining up in these races said plenty about his constitution. Many horses who have one hard fall or one long season mentally check out of the game. Oju Chosan kept coming back, ears forward, ready for another circuit.

2022: the sixth and last Grand Jump

The twist in the tale came a year later. In April 2022, at the age of 11, Oju Chosan returned to Nakayama and won the Grand Jump for the sixth time, regaining “his” race and setting a record as the oldest horse in Japan to win a graded contest.

It was his 20th career win from 38 starts, 18th from 30 steeplechase outings, and his ninth J-G1 victory, figures that belong in any discussion of the greatest jumpers of the modern era.

Later that year he had one final crack at the Nakayama Daishogai, finishing sixth on Christmas Eve before retiring to stud at Versailles Farm in Hokkaido for the 2023 season.

The Japan Racing Association had already produced official merchandise in his honour, a rare tribute for a jumper, and by the time he left the stage he had pulled a niche branch of the sport into the wider racing conversation.

Legacy of a serial Grand Jump winner

Strip away the romance and the numbers are still stark. Six Nakayama Grand Jumps, three Nakayama Daishogais, multiple G2 trial wins, more than 900 million yen in prize-money and a record as Japan’s most prolific J-G1 steeplechaser. Add back the context, the changing cast of rivals, the different conditions, the demands of that course, and a portrait emerges of a horse who turned up, year after year, and did the same hard thing remarkably well.

In Britain and Ireland, the shorthand is to call the Nakayama Grand Jump “Japan’s National”, and if that is the case then Oju Chosan is the horse who kept coming back and winning it like clockwork.

There are flashier flat champions and more widely known names from the JRA calendar, but for the fans who filed into Nakayama each April, he offered something that only jump racing really delivers.

The joy of seeing the same old warrior, over the same old fences, still finding a way to be in front where it counts.