YUTAKA TAKE 

Another sleepless night! But us Brits are a tough breed - we're taught to do all manner of madcap things like sing Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life as we sit in the pouring rain at Wimbledon, eating our strawberries and cream under an umbrella waiting for the covers to come off the courts and the matches to restart. Bright side...? Think. Well, I've got back down to my fighting weight in no time, although I doubt many doctors would recommend the 'Sleepless in Chiba' diet! Notwithstanding, the bottom line is the old brain isn't really up to research work at the moment, so I may as well update the blog a bit more.

What better way to kick things off than a look at Yutaka Take - the Lester Piggott of Japan. Born in Kyoto in 1969, Take-san comes from a racing family - his father is Kunihiko Take, who had a legendary racing career in Japan, while his brother, Koshiro, is also a jockey.

Entering the JRA jockey school at 15, since then Yutaka Take has won virtually every race there is to win in the Land of the Rising Sun, some of them on several occasions, although most people will doubtless cite the Triple Crown year with Deep Impact as a career highlight.

Having been JRA's leading jockey for virtually every year for two decades, his fame is such in Japan that he even had a horse racing video game marketed under his name. And like Lester in Europe, you don't need to be a racing fan to have heard of him. So far, he has clocked up almost 3500 JRA wins, a suitably large number of NAR Dirt victories, and numerous wins abroad, including successful big race sorties in Great Britain, France, Dubai and Hong Kong.

This picture shows my crazy horse (Mayano Time, aka 'Jaguar') after winning his fourth and final JRA race with Take-san. I found it on the internet a while back, but couldn't track the owner of the image. If anyone knows where it came from, or indeed if you took the picture, I'd love to get hold of a better quality copy.