Another Runner

Kealoha passed his race proficiency test easy enough today thanks to the sterling effort of Masashige Honda. His first race is due on 11th March, which is a bit unfortunate, as that's the day of Louis' graduation from Junior High School. With any luck, Kealoha will have done some extra gate training and gained some decent muscle tone by then! I hope we can keep Mar-kun as the jockey...

Quite a few Carrot Club reports in, and I'm just going to say 'no comment' on the JRA stuff and basically leave it at that. Trovao is being trained at a gentle pace, but this horse is on the NAR big race ladder, and more planning is necessary as a result - timing is dictated by the fixed date of the targeted races themselves, with smaller runs in-between if the gap is too big. It's a different scenario, and the only JRA horse in anything like that position is Massabielle. Enough said.

Shine Tiara won at the end of January and will be back home from her rest spell soon, with Yuya Yamazaki putting his usual level of planning in motion to time the return in readiness for a March run (there was no meeting in February, so it was a good chance for a break), and Pop Label is out on the 25th at TCK. He teams up with Mashima-kun for the first time, starting in gate three in the 1200m 10R. Looking at the practice times, if we can nail the start, we're in with a chance - at the end of the day, a win is long overdue with this fella!

Moving abroad, Raining Dollars runs in Australia on Friday, which should be fun. Chelsea Jokic is lined up as the jockey, who scored a treble the other day, and combined with the weather starting to cool down, that puts us in with a chance of getting 'Ted' his first win. Fingers crossed.

PS. Rush Attack is now lined up for the 6th March at Nakayama, but you can lay odds that will be a popular destination, and I'll believe the entry has gone through the day before the actual race. Meanwhile, Irish Harp continues its disappointing post-Sugai existence. The practice time posted would put it in a league well below Single Cask, which is hard to believe, although there's a chance that the huge weight gain has something to do with it. Earlier in the month, the scales must have almost broke, as she hit exactly 50kg more than her last race weight, recorded at the end of November, and representing her average over the whole of 2015. Things never improve in JRA. And of course they never will if you have no pride in your work and no-one is under pressure to win... At least NAR gives us some hope, and Phosphorus has been slotted in for a Kawasaki race on the 3rd March.