“1988, the Kikuka Sho,

Had the horse not encountered the man,

And had the man not encountered the horse.

He is the horse that creates the ‘genius’,

His name is Super Creek.

How many authentic encounters do we have in our lives?”

(Original translation by the Umamusume Wiki. Edited by me)

What could have been history redefined in one direction had instead gone the other way. The first star of a new era has etched their name onto the footnote with help from the veteran who laboured since the country found its new heights. The Triple Crown glory will not happen this year, but a new kind of legacy awaits instead. The Kikuka Sho is over and the children have all grown up.

Final Results (In a Nutshell)

Guess who’s on third? Take steals like Lupin the Third! The combination of economical positioning and a well-disciplined bit of movement from the runaway attempt allows Going to Sky to claim his first Group 1 win as the major star of his sire Contrail’s first crop while netting his main jockey Yutaka Take his sixth win in the same race. Basse Terre pulled off an aggressive turn and a daring dash to claim 2nd place only by a nose which bears great promise to his future runs. Danon History confirms his seeming top class back in the beginning of his career with a 3rd place in his first G1 bid. The top favourite and Triple Crown prospective Lovcen sadly gassed out hard to place a dismal 14th place…

Positions at Bends

Sectional Time

Amateurish Analysis (Top 3)

Well, there has to be something about the best-performing racehorses in the race to warrant a deeper look into why they are able to excel as well as they did. In focusing on the top 3, we can look into both the moves made and the context surrounding their pedigree and their race records.

Going to Sky

The winner of the final leg of the Triple Crown didn’t have the ultimate achievement in a 3-year old season on the line. However, he does strike many milestones in his dramatic breakthrough to the top echelons of Japan’s horseracing scene. Going to Sky’s first (and hopefully not his only) G1 win sets up the generational streak of three wins in the same race from the sireline. His grandfather Deep Impact also won back in 2006 to cement his Triple Crown race as did his father Contrail in 2020. For a start, this suggests a clear bit of staying talent that allows him to succeed in the race by being a bit of a jack of all trades performance-wise even though he skipped the Satsuki Sho after an underperformance in the G3 Kisaragi Sho. His win also points toward the G2 Aoba Sho’s de-facto value as a gateway predictor for potential top stayers especially with last year’s victor Energico moving on to also win the Kikuka Sho as well.

The jockey cam video also illustrates the mental maturity and discipline shown by Going to Sky under the jockeyship of Take as he runs his way to victory. He opted for the on-pace position behind the conventional pacesetter in Sea to Summit and Ask Edinburgh, stuck close to the inner rail throughout the race to conserve stamina, and didn’t swing wide on the final corner. This efficiency allows him to enjoy both the navigational advantage to spurt as cleanly as possible while he avoids the combination of traffic and collision that led to many poor placements and jockey punishments. This allows him to clinch out the win against the dramatic spurt coming out of Basse Terre whose pathway proves more arduous and even controversial.

For the performance, it’s worth praising Take for how well he did in riding Going to Sky to victory. In addition to the run marking him as the oldest winning jockey in the race’s history, it also sets his strong credentials apart from others by extending his total wins to six in what is nearly 40 years’ worth of an invaluable career. It’s not hard to see why many hail him as the very best in the country. Even as he’s pushing what most would regard as retirement age, he’s still capable of making observant moves to ensure that his rides will get the best run they can which allows them to enjoy reaching up to their peak. We saw that previously with Sixpence in the G1 Yasuda Kinen as well as Meisho Tabaru in the G1 Takarazuka Kinen.

Going to Sky’s future race to cap off what could well be the epic climax of his 3YO season remains open. His connections, like his trainer Yuki Uehara, have seemingly flirted towards entering the Japan Cup as his next start based on their comments that he’s still lively after his run. The historic pattern surrounding the Kikuka Sho-Japan Cup turnover tends to be shaky even with Triple Crown champions as both Symboli Rudolf and Contrail had suffered their first loss even with the undefeated streak on the line. The longer distance in the final leg and the shorter amount of weeks following the Kikuka Sho compared to the Shuka Sho makes for a big challenge to overcome due to risks of long-term fatigue. Should he be able to win both however, the year-end award of the best 3YO colt could prove itself to be a tug of war between the Double Crown victor Lovcen and the legend-changing Going to Sky barring an extra G1 win from either…

Basse Terre

Basse Terre’s career is one of big “It’s Joever” and “We’re so back”; his big break in the G2 Yayoi Sho alongside his Japanese Derby 3rd place tends to be offset with ease by his bottoming out in other graded runs. He seems to be the 3YO Kitaling whose form could have the signs to reach the highest out of the others barring Black Olympia whose season this year is essentially focused entirely on allowance clearances after placing 3rd in the Aoba Sho. However, when he didn’t pop off, he tended to falter hard as proven by his double-digit placements in the Satsuki Sho and the G2 St. Lite Kinen. It doesn’t help that he seemingly prefers to be positioned towards the back end which means that he’ll need to rely on an absurd spurt should the front-positioned runners not tire out.

The Kikuka Sho run however is a marvel for Basse Terre as he’s able to prove his staying capability with the fastest last 3 furlong time of 34.9 seconds despite falling short of achieving the father-son victory. He sits in the back as per usual over the first 3/4th of the race, but he begins to make his move on the final corner where he has to navigate around the clear blockage that’s coming from many other entrants making a wide turn. This led to a controversial shove where he knocked Audacia onto Shonan Hayanami with his main jockey Yuga Kawada doing little to discipline his act. Dangerous as the act is, it gives the avenue for him to go all out with little regard as he closed in on Going to Sky by only a few centimetres in his loss. At least Kawada gets fined along with others for his troubles even if his ride did give his all as though he’s running for the actual win himself.

Fans note that Basse Terre’s key weakness seems to be his immaturity in how he behaves. His ruthless one-minded focus on running that Kawada did little to rein in also led to him adversely affecting Congestus’s and Lovcen’s run as they both had to also slow down to avoid a collision. Nonetheless, Basse Terre’s physical class stands as being among the most impressive and it would be interesting to see how he’ll do in the future. You would hopefully get to see him mentally mature to the point of not getting into any risky moves and that Kawada actually puts some restraint on him to not act up on his bullshit. I would certainly hope to see him run either in the G1 Arima Kinen at the end of this year or next year’s G1 Spring Tenno Sho as the key target.

Danon History

Prior to the actual run, Danon History’s entry into the Kikuka Sho was met with both wholesale excitement and considerable reservation. It would have marked his first ever G1 attempt as a whole as well as only his second ever graded attempt since last year’s G2 Tokyo Sports Hai Nisai Stakes where a late start saw him get a poor placement despite being an overwhelming top favourite. His massive margins of victory in his allowance runs conflict with the simple fact that he’s not exactly running against entrants whose form were perceived to be hitting their absolute peak. He might have potential in staying, but he’ll need to prove himself worthy of being the best in his generation.

And that’s what he did in the actual race. Danon History foregoes the usual frontrunning position that allowed him to pull off a large margin of win in favour of going on-pace on his jockey Christophe Lemaire’s best instinct due to King Glory going for the ballsy runaway bid. He notably spent much of the race running from the outside as the outer gate draw added some more distance for him to run along with the other entrants already occupying the spots by the inner rail. This means that he’ll need to rely on his class a lot more to pull off the win and Lemaire would have to make even more clutch decisions to continue his win streak. The latter at least didn’t come to fruition unfortunately as he used his whip too late on the final straight once he noticed that Going to Sky and Basse Terre have enough stamina for a stronger spurt.

There are big positives for Danon History to carry with him even in spite of the loss. The big prize money supercharges his entry into open class which gives his connections more freedom to enter him in more graded races. His strong performance will open doors for him on where he could go regarding specialisation. He could go down the natural staying route and go for one of the G3 Diamond Stakes or the G2 Hanshin Daishoten if the main goal is the upcoming Spring Tenno Sho. Given that another Danon horse in Danon Decile had ran in and won the G1 Dubai Sheema Classic last year, an international expedition could be in play with a domestic lower-graded race as a warm-up although it’s unknown how he’ll handle travelling.

The sky’s certainly the limit for Danon History as he finally proves his worth as the precocious 2YO he once was last year. I’ll be very interested to see how he’ll do in the future because it’s clear that his poor temperament might have sadly robbed us of a potential Easy Goer-Sunday Silence rivalry with Lovcen for the first two legs of the Triple Crown at least. For Lemaire, he’ll have some info to keep in mind in riding Stinger Glass for the G1 Melbourne Cup even if his Kikuka Sho streak is shattered for good.

Amateurish Analysis (Other Competitors)

For the rest of the entrants, some have made moves that might have shaped the very way the race is run which makes for unexpected leanings that play to the advantage of others. This section is for those who either had done better than expected even if outside the top 3 or have shaped the race in a way that might have tilted the results in favour of others.

Sanono Greater

A noteworthy shoutout is worth giving to Sanono Greater who had previously gotten his graded breakthrough in the G3 Radio Nikkei Sho. While his father in Greater London suggested a preference towards shorter distance as his ideal aptitude, he’s able to somehow stay a good while to the point of having the second fastest L3F time of 35 to nab 4th place. I doubt that his connections would want to continue down with him being a stayer and would instead want to ready his comfort zone as being between 1800-2200m. However, it’s a jolly good showing that would leave you wondering if there are more surprises that could arise later on down the line.

Sea to Summit, Shonan Hayanami, Majorelle Bleu, and Congestus

The four runners I feel are worth shouting out are the ones who happen to lag behind Danon History and Sanono Greater. While Sanono Greater’s past records made his staying bid very unlikely after this run, the others give off the long-term impression of having the potential to bloom into genuinely decent stayers despite having at best have one be placed within the top 5. That they’re able to pick up their speed on the final straight for the spurt (with Shonan Hayanami having the third fastest L3F time of 35.1) leaves a good impression that a quicker reaction from their jockeys in hindsight could see either one pull off an upset win. I’d be curious to see if either one of them were to enter the G2 Stayer’s Stakes at the end of this year instead of the Arima Kinen to see if they’re talented enough in the long-distance specialty for either the Spring Tenno Sho or even an Australian raid towards the Melbourne Cup.

Charing Cross and M’s Begin

Aside from Basse Terre, the other Kitasan Black progenies who did their best despite the poor placements are Charing Cross and M’s Begin. Charing Cross, being ridden by the more inexperienced Yukito Ishikawa, was subjected to a good bit of shuffling towards the back which helped to ensure he didn’t overexert himself. However, this pushes him well towards having to deal with traffic which guarantees his loss and it’s this bit of small overcorrection that would have many argue about how important jockeying experience is when it comes to staying.

M’s Begin, on the other hand, has shown some individual bits of impressiveness even if he’s arguably too far towards the back without considerable moves made by his jockey Mirai Iwata before the final corner. The final straight saw Iwata opt for the inner rail for more optimised movement which allows M’s Begin to get a good enough run. His L3F time isn’t as impressive as Basse Terre’s although it could have gone far worse had he been subjected to a wide swing. Otherwise, he and Charing Cross will likely be grinding allowance races for a while and you’d hope that they both get through it quickly enough.

Lovcen

The most stinging defeat out of the entrants has to go to Lovcen, the Double Crown prospect who seemed to be on the verge of making history. An upward rearing which led to him getting a late start forced him to expedite his stamina to ensure that he won’t have to be placed too far from the back – and the fact that the inner rail’s already occupied forced him to run towards the outside in a good portion of the race. Mix that with the need to make a premature move forward by the final corner to try and seize a positional advantage and you can see how tired out Lovcen truly is from the combination of both the distracting runaway attempt which obliterates the tempo reading as well as his many misfortunes. I doubt that the immediate reaction to pump the brakes at Basse Terre’s swerves would do much to improve his placing given the absurd amount of effort he need to put in based on his circumstances.

It’s telling thus how fans would note how special Triple Crown champions are despite what should’ve been race-losing errors. Deep Impact was described as being prone to being overexcited with constantly running and was no stranger to late starts, but his Kikuka Sho victory was a damning sign of his physical talent back in 2005. Narita Brian had to deal with a similar big margin of being behind the frontrunner Steel Cast only to pull off one of the most impressive spurts in the race’s history to win by a whopping 7 lengths on the final straight back in 1994. Mr. C.B. too made a premature move forward on the final corner to cement his historic achievement in 1983.

Lovcen’s small margins of victory combined with his intellect awards him a loyal following and newfound dreams of a fairytale run, but it was never meant to be. His trainer Haruki Sugiyama had already hinted that he feels that Lovcen’s ideal distance is between 2000 and 2400m as shown by his Satsuki Sho and Japanese Derby win with the Kikuka Sho sticking out more as an aspirational Triple Crown target that’s to be aimed at due to public expectations. The big loss comes with renewed focus towards readying him at his seeming distance aptitude of 2000m with the G1 Hong Kong Cup as the possible target where Sha Tin Racecourse’s flat layout would put little to no strain on his stamina. A win there would be a massive confidence boost that could lead to him moving between Hong Kong and Japan for what could be the rest of his career. Hopefully the moves work out for him!

King Glory

The final bit of commentary is worth throwing at King Glory, the major underdog whose poor showings in past graded attempts had culminated in a massive gambit. HIs jockey Yuji Tannai, whose graded wins often come from relative underdogs, has more or less encouraged him to pull off a big runaway attempt up until the final corner which messed up the tempo readings of many. His lead is so massive that a handful of commenters even wonder whether he has enough stamina to somehow hold on to a dramatic upset win. He didn’t have that sadly enough for his newfound fans. However, such a performance is entertaining and while we’ll need to see whether he’s able to get his third win to enter open class, it’s an unforgettable enough showing in how big its knock-on effects are on other runners be it Lovcen’s amplified tiredness or Danon History’s more reserved positioning to being on-pace.