Palace Malice, Yoshida relocating to Darley Japan

Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice and dual-surface Grade 1 winner Yoshida will stand the 2024 season at Darley Japan, the farm has announced. Palace Malice formerly stood at Three Chimneys Farm, where he entered stud in 2016. He represents a nascent investment in Curlin’s sireline for Japan. Meanwhile, Yoshida, who entered stud at WinStar Farm in 2020, is a representative of the most prominent sireline in Japan.

Palace Malice won the 2013 Belmont Stakes, the 2014 Metropolitan Handicap, and four other graded stakes. He produced Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Structor in his first crop, and his other top progeny include graded stakes winners Fly On Angel, Jantar Mantar, Like the King, and Mr. Monomoy.

Palace Malice will be the first son of emerging sire-of-sires Curlin to stand in Japan. Structor preceded his sire to the country, and his first foals arrived this year. Palace Malice has another fine advertisement in his new residence, as Jantar Mantar was a Grade 2 winner at Kyoto in November.

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Yoshida is returning to the country of his birth, as he was bred in Japan by Northern Farm, and was purchased by WinStar as a yearling. He is by multiple Grade/Group 1 winner Heart’s Cry, one of the many top-level runners and sires produced by Sunday Silence, the American Horse of the Year who went on to a breed-shaping stallion career in Japan. Representatives from his line making their way back to the U.S. have been few and far between, even more so with the departure of top-class runner Yoshida.

Yoshida won the Grade 1 Woodford Reserve Turf Classic, and later moved to dirt to capture the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes. He is the sire of nine first-crop winners to rank 15th on the North American freshman earnings list through Dec. 13, including Grade 3-placed Yatta and stakes-placed Okiro.

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