Tuesday, December 13, 2016

In Shock

For a change, a pleasant surprise... Another Door, beautifully guided by Osamu Shihara, was able to take advantage of a breakaway group that went too fast and take its second win today at Sonoda, claiming a healthy purse worth 3.3x more than it has managed to accumulate in all of its seven previous outings! I don't think anyone would have been more surprised than me at the result, and if I was asked to give a pre-race prediction again, it would still be fifth at best (amazingly, it started as ninth favourite). Interestingly, it found another gear at the end, pointing toward longer distances suiting the horse, for the 1700m 9R was 500m longer than any of the earlier races. At last, and not before time after so much disappointment, we seem to have found a way forward with this one.

PS. Looks like they've found another race for War Chronicle, and Larressingle should be out again a few days later with any luck. Amazing that you can run horses every two weeks in NAR, but the same horses need several months between runs in JRA. Ummm...

No comments:

Post a Comment