Testing, Testing...

Chocolat Sucre passed her test with ease this morning, as did Magic Key, with the latter promising to be something very special. As a full sister of Clave Secreta, her blood is right, and today she cruised home in second, with no whip used, and looked absolutely superb when walking - as I said to a friend in England, I've never seen such a beautifully proportioned horse in Japan before.

As for the next races, Beat The Boarder runs at TCK (NAR's Tokyo track) on Friday, hopefully making up for last time's poor performance, while a A Touch Of Sparkle is out again at Fairyhouse in Ireland on Saturday. Looking a bit further ahead, Blacklister and Rush Attack should be out in the first week of December.

Meanwhile, I can see Irish Harp's trainer is definitely going to annoy me over the next few months, as his statements are like a knee-jerk reaction to what I said before - 'care' is something I wholeheartedly agree with, and if a horse comes out of a race needing TLC, that's what it should get. But to say there is no point in running a horse soon after it's last race is ridiculous - if it's in good condition, a race is no different to a hard training session, and the track experience is something that cannot be duplicated at a training centre no matter how hard you try (particularly a Japanese establishment). Furthermore, he can't choose between Nakayama and Chukyo, when the obvious choice - if experience from the last blown race now tells him the horse pulls to the right - is Nakayama. I can't tell if it's a real statement, which raises questions, or something simply said to bait me. My boy figured out Nakayama would be better in about 0.01 seconds!

Flying in the face of Irish Harp thinking is War Chronicle, who raced on the 6th November and came first, then raced on the 20th and came second behind the hot favourite. She is due to race again at the next meeting in less than a week's time. Two weeks between races is more than enough time for 'care', and this proves it - months and months away from the track is only good for those making money from the training centres. In England, we've raced back-to-back with shorter breaks than that, and the racing in the UK is a lot more competitive than it is here...