Big in Japan: Ryan Moore maintains American Pharoah's smart start at Nakayama

American Pharoah maintained the flying start to his progeny as Ryan Moore guided his son Cafe Pharoah to an emphatic success in a newcomers’ event at Nakayama on Saturday.

Coolmore’s Triple Crown hero has now fielded 26 individual winners from his first crop worldwide and has been doing conspicuously well in Japan, with this juvenile becoming his fifth winner from only seven runners seen to date.

Bred by Paul Pompa out of his More Than Ready mare Mary’s Follies, a winner of the Grade 2 Mrs Revere Stakes at Churchill Downs, Cafe Pharoah was bought by Narvick International for $475,000 at the two-year-old sale at Ocala in March.

The mare has produced some smart offspring already including Night Prowler, who took several Grade 3s for Chad Brown and three-year-old Animal Kingdom filly Regal Glory, who Pompa has retained with that same trainer and dead-heated for the Grade 2 Lake Placid Stakes at Saratoga in the summer. Pompa jointly owned the 2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness scorer Big Brown.

A stakes opportunity surely awaits the Noriyuki Hori-trained Cafe Pharoah, who was sent off local favourite and was always at the front of the field in the nine-furlong dirt contest before Moore pushed him ten lengths clear of his rivals.

His sire has already struck at up to Grade 2 level with Four Wheel Drive, who kept on the right highway in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, while Aidan O’Brien’s Monarch Of Egypt was second to Siskin in the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes.

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