Perennial leading Japanese sire Sunday Silence, North America's Horse of the Year in 1989, sired his first Australian-born winner on Saturday when two-year-old Sunday Joy scrambled home in the Tommy Smith Slipper, a six-furlong listed at Doomben racecourse in Brisbane.

Trained by Gai Waterhouse and making her third career start, the bay filly was slowly away in the four-horse field, some three lengths adrift, but gradually made headway as the leaders tired and won by about one length. Time was 1.09.42 on a track rated as fast.

Her dam, Australian Group 1 winner Joie Denise, by Danehill, was one of a small group of Arrowfield mares sent to Japan to be covered by Sunday Silence to Southern Hemisphere time in 1998. The resulting filly, Sunday Joy, was sold by Arrowfield Stud, agent, for breeders John Messara and John Singleton, for approximately $510,000 at the 2001 Magic Millions yearling sale, and was purchased by Singleton, a co-owner of Magic Millions Sales.

Sunday Silence, a 16-year-old son of Halo, has stood his entire career in Japan at the Shadai Stallion Station of the Yoshida family. From eight crops of racing age, he has sired nine champions and 65 stakes winners and his progeny have amassed purse earnings of 288,107,393 through December 28. —Delamere Usher