Kōhei Matsuyama

I'll be honest, I didn't know much about Japanese horse racing before this, but Kōhei Matsuyama is the kind of name that grows on you the more you hear it called out in the Kansai paddocks. Kobe-born, riding out of western Japan, he strikes me as the quiet workhorse of the profession, a guy who builds a career on trust rather than flash. And look, being a jockey is wild to me. You're starving yourself down to fighting weight, then climbing onto half a ton of muscle going forty miles an hour, every single week, knowing one bad step ends badly. The fact anyone does that for a living, let alone with calm hands and a poker face, earns my respect. He feels like a craftsman, not a showman. Stay healthy and keep riding, man.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Kōhei Matsuyama is a Japanese thoroughbred racing jockey born on March 1, 1990, in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture. He built his career based in the Kansai region of Japan and is recognized as a steady and reliable rider in the Japanese horse racing circuit. A graduate of the JRA Horse Racing School, he rides out of the Ritto Training Center, debuted in 2009, and won the fillies' Triple Crown in 2020 aboard Daring Tact.

Name (English)

Kōhei Matsuyama

Name (Japanese)

松山弘平

Reading

まつやま こうへい

Born

March 1, 1990 (age 36)

Origin

Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Jockey

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Horse

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%BE%E5%B1%B1%E5%BC%98%E5%B9%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11529863

Tags

• From Hyogo Prefecture
• Jockey

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.