he was a pioneer that changed japanese horse racing in the showa...

13 views Jan 23, 2026 ~12 min read

he was a pioneer that changed japanese horse racing in the showa era
he was a prideful moron that destroyed his horses
he was a shrewd businessman and breeder
he was a temperamental, stubborn tyrant
the truth is somewhere in the middle - today, let's talk about tomohiro wada

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let me get you caught up to speed if you're not aware of what's been going on in the EN umamusume fandom
very long story short - someone made a haha funny sirius symboli slander post, people got mad because sirius's situation IRL really did suck, it was a whole back and forth

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not gonna link it or post screenshots or anything because frankly more drama and more debate isn't what the fandom needs
just know that it happened and people got mad about it
sorry to play cringe centrist today but i'm not interested in that right now

what i AM interested in are the stories of sirius symboli and material, both horses who were owned by tomohiro wada, but had tragic ends

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but how, exactly? lots of people like to get mad at tomohiro (gonna be referring to him by his first name since his son takahiro shows up later) and blame him, but how culpable was he really? what did he even do?

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let's start from the beginning
koichiro wada - tomohiro's father - founded what would later become symboli ranch in the chiba prefecture in 1921
then, a year later in 1922, tomohiro was born
1935, they start breeding thoroughbred horses under "symboli ranch"

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world war ii happens, so skip forward even more time
he was the architect behind the breeding of mejiro asama ('70 akiten), the first grey horse to win one of the great 8 races and sakura shouri ('78 derby), among other great horses

but, if we're talking about his first big breakthrough, it'd undoubtedly be 1967 and 1970 japanese horse of the year, speed symboli

i was actually looking up information on speed symboli to write a thread on his illustrious career before making this threat, but i got frustrated with how impossible it was to talk about him without mentioning tomohiro wada

in my other threads, i've rarely mentioned owners - the most i've ever talked about them is meisei opera's owners, who were proud of him and didn't really interfere with his team when they were doing their thing

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tomohiro wada, on the other hand, was reportedly an extremely demanding owner
i'll get more into depth in the more egregious examples of this later, but even back in the 60s when speed symboli was operating, he was pretty heavy-handed

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i won't be doing a full in-depth exploration of the horses relevant to tomohiro wada's story just yet, mostly because if i did this thread would be insanely long, but in short - tomohiro wada was a man obsessed with horse racing, particularly overseas

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when the japanese government finally started allowing horse imports in 1953, guess who immediately jumped overseas to start sourcing racehorses? that's right, it was tomohiro
he was apparently known for experimenting with breeding techniques and stuff

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that's how he cooked up speed symboli in 1963
he couldn't find any buyers, though - speed symboli had a pretty thin frame, so in the end, tomohiro just shrugged, bought him back, and decided to race him himself

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skip forward a few years, and it's 1967
speed symboli's made a name for himself and even won the haruten
after a winstreak early in the year, tomohiro sent speed overseas to america - where he'd finish 5th in an invitational race

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to be fair, this wasn't actually half bad for speed
he was up against a double crowner from america and a derby winner from the UK, among a field of other strong horses from the era, and even as the last favorite (21 to 1 odds), he finished top 5

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tomohiro wasn't satisfied with just that, though - speed had returned to japan at the tail end of '67 and spent the '68 season slowly recovering, and in '69, tomohiro would send him overseas again, this time first to the king george VI and queen elizabeth stakes in the UK

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he didn't win, finishing 4th
it was france next, headed to the deauville grand prix - finishing 10th
then, the prix de l'arc de triomphe

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i usually like to fluff up races and dramatize them, but there's not much to say here
speed symboli would finish worse than 11th - back then, records weren't kept for 11th or lower finishes in that race, so it's not known where speed finished in the 1969 prix de l'arc

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speed returned to japan and would make a miraculous revival
in hindsight, speed symboli was a really goddamn hardy horse - he'd traveled alone to three different countries, and still come back in 1969 to win the arima kinen
he would go on to win the '70 takarazuka in record time

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then, he won the '70 arima as his retirement race
it was record breaking in multiple ways - speed symboli was the first horse to win 3 grand prix races in a row, a feat that would only be matched by grass wonder and chrono genesis years later

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he was also the oldest horse to have won one of the great 8 races at the time, and the first horse to have won the arima twice in a row
it was also the most number of arima appearances (5) until cosmo bulk would beat it with 6 later on

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sorry, i got sidetracked glazing speed symboli because he was the pioneer for japan racing overseas and was also a really strong horse
the point is that he only added fuel to tomohiro's desire to race overseas - and that's how we get to sirius and material

you probably know about the general story of sirius symboli, but here's a quick rundown
after his win in the 1985 tokyo yushun, it was planned to send him and symboli rudolf to race in europe
however, rudolf would injure his leg shortly before the takarazuka kinen

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so, the decision was made to send sirius alone to europe
this was a time when the conventional logic of horses being social creatures wasn't really a thing, so he was just sent off alone
to make matters worse, trouble was brewing at home - tomohiro was getting up to no good

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if you look at sirius's racing record during his time in europe, you'll notice that his first two races were with yukio okabe, the jockey most famous for being symboli rudolf's one and only partner
but then immediately after, it's just a host of local jockeys

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from start to finish, everything was so goddamn messy
sirius just kept on getting passed around and thrown into race after race, and during this, there was a whole host of issues involving rudolf's career going on at home

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tomohiro was getting into conflicts with rudolf's team, particularly his trainer, nohira yuji (formerly speed symboli's main jockey)
nohira wanted to give rudolf a chance to rest, but tomohiro pushed rudolf through with an unreasonable time schedule

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rudolf would finish sixth in a race in america
this would end up being his last race - he would develop leg injuries and would be retired later that year in '86

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just to give you a context on how bad it'd gotten, tomohiro didn't even invite nohira to the races
nohira had to cough up the money for a ticket just to go watch rudolf race, only to watch him lose
to make matters worse, okabe had pointed out that rudolf was acting weird before

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nobody listened, rudolf raced anyway, he got injured, he retired
but, ultimately, the biggest loser from this situation was sirius, who was still stuck in europe
the entire plan had been for them to go to europe together, and it had fallen apart all because of tomohiro's greed

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tomohiro had wanted that perfect narrative - rudolf would win big in a g1 in america, then head to europe in the autumn to win more g1s there
nohira had been more realistic, but he'd been overruled by the same guy who'd trusted him with speed symboli a decade prior

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when sirius would eventually be recalled from europe, he would return with no wins to his name and as a changed horse
his personality had changed due to the treatment and isolation he'd suffered, and he had new body issues, the most infamous being his half chewed up tongue

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tomohiro was still being stubborn about the entire deal, and sirius would continue to race in japan to close out '87 and into '88, but eventually, his body would force the issue
a fracture after the '88 akiten would force tomohiro to retire sirius

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god, i haven't even gotten to material, have i? he doesn't get talked about as much in the global fandom, but he was owned by tomohiro, too
he intentionally didn't put the symboli crown name on material because the plan was to send him to france eventually

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however, such a fate would never come to pass
material would fail to win a g1, and he would break his leg severely in a race in 1989
tomohiro tried to force a surgery on him, but it didn't take - a few days in, material was writhing in agony and bleeding from all sides

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they eventually relented and called a vet to euthanize him, but by the time they showed up, material had already died
he's one of the horses that make up the unfortunate '87 classics generation, alongside gold city and sakura star o, who also died young

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but, ultimately, what would truly define that period of time for tomohiro would be the stable transfer incident
out of the blue, during the 1985 classics season, tomohiro suddenly demanded that sirius's regular jockey, kato kazuhiro, be changed

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at the time, sirius was 2 for 4 in his record during the 1984 season
one of those losses was a late start, and another was a DQ for blocking the path of another horse
tomohiro kept on pressing sirius's trainer about kato's mistakes, demanding that okabe be switched in instead

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that's when out of the blue, almost as if in retaliation, tomohiro pulled sirius out of that trainer's stable and sent him somewhere else
instantly, the union was in an uproar because genuinely wtf was he thinking, and they managed to work something out

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okabe would jockey for sirius's first race in 1985, then kato would jockey for the trial for the derby
well, okabe would win, but leg issues made sirius skip the trial and go directly to the derby, where he'd win

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except uh oh, tomohiro didn't even show up to the derby win, saying he had a cold (biggest cap ever but whatever)
and after the race, he criticized kato and called him unprofessional and stuff

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however - let's now shift gears
bit of a sudden mood shift but i want to talk about how he pushed horse racing forward in the early showa era
that's right - immediately after ragging on him, i'm gonna start glazing him

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i already mentioned above how he was the one that cooked up mejiro asama and sakura shori, but you have to remember that as the head of symboli ranch and a shrewd breeder in his own right, he was the one that cooked up the three major symbolis (well, so far, anyway - not kris s)

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he was also the first to follow innovative overseas methods of raising horses, which are commonplace now in japan
he had a good eye for foreign sires, too - he was the one that brought partholon in from ireland, and he'd end up being japan's leading sire for several years

just take a look at what interviews with some staff have to say (translated)
he was a man of great passion
remember, he was the one that pushed overseas racing forward with speed symboli, and it sure as hell wasn't just dumb luck that speed symboli was so goated

and what's more - i want you to take a look at his translated wikipedia page
man, what the hell is this
do you see all those [citation needed]s? this is just paragraphs of slander but nothing to back it up

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don't get me wrong - at least some of it is correct
if you check sirius symboli's page on wikipedia, for example, there're records and citations for the jockey change incident, and there are other articles that i've dug up that talk about it

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i'm not here to defend tomohiro, i'm not here to say he was right or whatever
i'm saying he wasn't JUST this spooky boogeyman that ruined sirius's career for the sake of his own greed and pride

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i'd like to conclude this thread by basically saying that tomohiro wada has a complicated legacy at best
he was a pioneer, sure, but by the time of his death in 1994, symboli ranch had declined
he was a has-been
his time had been over for a long time now

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it's important to recognize the difference between slander and facts when discussing the legacy of someone so complicated
yeah, he did basically kill rudolf's career and sirius's career, too
but he was also someone that helped bring about a new era of horse racing in japan

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but after he was gone, it took his son takahiro bringing symboli kris s over from america for symboli ranch to regain even a fraction of the glory it had once shone with
like, they're still around NOW, they're just nowhere near how they were in the 80s and stuff

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gonna cut off my rambling and just end it by saying that i'm hoping this gives you a more nuanced perspective of tomohiro wada, sirius symboli's owner
he was an ass, but he was an ass that pushed japanese horse racing forward

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this thread was written very poorly on 0 hours of sleep to make sure i could get it in during the tail end of the sirius debate so if you have any questions please leave them here so i can answer
this thread is probably my worst work yet unfortunately but i had to pound it out

he was a pioneer that changed japanese horse racing in the showa...

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