That the racing world is small isn’t new, but on Sunday it was smaller than ever. The hitherto somewhat ordinary New Zealand bred four-year-old Super Thunder, who entered race 9 at Seoul on Sunday with a record of one win from fifteen prior starts, bolted in by a full eleven-lengths, downing an odds-on favourite in the process. It wasn’t until after the race that his jockey, Kozzi Asano, realized that he had already sat on him long ago.

While a native of Japan, Asano learned his craft as a jockey in New Zealand, riding almost 350 winners across eight seasons before taking up a license in Korea in the summer of 2024. Like compatriot Masa Tanaka, “Kiwi Kozzi” speaks with a New Zealand accent and is very much a product of that nation’s racing industry.

“Super Thunder is an ok horse, not a star, but it wasn’t a strong race and he ran well. I was familiar with the dam (Glasgow) but I didn’t make the connection right away” Asano said on Wednesday. “Then on Sunday evening I talked on the phone to my wife, and she said ‘you know, you have ridden Super Thunder before’, I said ‘yeah, I rode him last start too’ and she said ‘no, even before that!'”

“Even before that” was at the Karaka Sales Centre, thirty minutes outside of Auckland, New Zealand in November 2023. The Karaka “Ready to Run” sale involves breeze-ups (where the horses about to be auctioned put in a timed work under racing tack for the cameras). Like many jockeys Asano participated as a rider for the breeze-ups and one youngster he was assigned was Lot 49, a “brown or grey gelding” by Reliable Man and out of the Testa Rossa mare Glasgow.

The juvenile who would become Super Thunder clocked 11.08 seconds for 200M under Asano and that was sufficient for the Seoul Racehorse Owners’ Association (SROA) to purchase him for NZ$25,000. HIs breeze-up, with Asano aboard, can be found here: https://www.nzb.co.nz/sales/23rtr/49.

What makes the coincidence even more remarkable is that while thirty years ago, most imported racehorses in Korea originated from Australia or New Zealand, these days, more than 90% of imports are from the United States, with their dirt pedigrees so beloved of Korean owners. Super Thunder touched down in Korea in January of 2024, one of just nine race horses imported from the country the entire year.

Super Thunder is owned by Yang Dong-hui and is trained at Seoul by Choi Yong-geon. It took him eleven tries to get his maiden win, which he did in March of this year having been dropped back to class 5 from the initial class 4 that all imported racehorses start at in Korea. That took him straight back to class 4 and he had been very much figuring things out with a 3rd and a pair of 5ths followed by a 2nd when Asano rode him for the first time on July 27th. When winning on Sunday, he was the 5.0 second-favourite.

“Amazing, really” said Asano. “I’d love to think he remembered me, both of us so far away from home. Like all the horses I ride, I told him before the race to trust me and let’s take a chance, and we claimed it.”

Asano (full name Asano Kazuya) has 38 winners from 324 rides in Korea, operating at an 11.7% win rate and 34.9% show rate. He is provisionally booked to ride Black Musk in the international G3 Korea Sprint at Seoul on Sunday September 7.