Low Expectations

Despite a poor field and the lightest jockey (newcomer Hatsuya Kowata), I don't have a lot of faith in getting a result at Kokura. We have to go back almost a year-and-a-half to see Single Cask's last decent performance, and I'm not expecting anything today either. Here's why: If you look at her records, other than a bad run due to an unsuitable distance in her learning phase that kicked up a 12th, she only ever performs well when she has back-to-back outings - a large gap of three months doesn't bode well if experience is anything to go by. I think we'll just be making up the numbers as usual - a pattern that we see far too often in JRA once a single win has been achieved, as the trainers can sit back and just watch the money coming in for another two or three years without having to put in any effort whatsoever. Most of them don't put much effort in in the first place, but it's that single win that gives them the cushy number (as if things weren't cushy enough already in JRA!), so that's a target to aim for before the horse can be released to Northern Farm and their blasted treadmills for 90% of the year - everyone in the inner circle gets a nice little cut, and owners are so used to this (knowing nothing about what goes on in real racing having been fed BS from the legendary JRA Book of Excuses for decades), no-one complains. We can also see the pattern confirmed through jockey choices on the 'also-ran' nags, with Single Cask serving as a perfect example - leading jockeys like Tosaki-kun and Uchida-san (both ex-NAR), a try with Genki Maruyama, then a last-ditch attempt on dirt with a new jockey (gaining a weight advantage that gave us the edge to claim that one, all-important victory), before a string of folks with an average winning percentage of 0.03 to keep things ticking over with little or no hope of a decent finish. Madness.

PS. Good start, but last by miles, begging the question - again! - whether these horses actually get trained at all. Confirmation of what I said earlier? Yep. JRA is a bad joke, unless you're in on it, of course, and then the money just keeps rolling in regardless of results. It's nothing like racing, that's for sure - you're simply left with the feeling that you're a victim of a scam...