An incredible weekend of international racing continues with the Group 1 Tenno Sho (Spring) at Kyoto Racecourse this afternoon.
The Tenno Sho is Japan’s best race over 3200m, won by some of the greats of Japanese racing including T M Opera O, Deep Impact and Jaguar Mail.
Three time Melbourne Cup winner Makybe Diva ran sixth to Suzuka Mambo in 2005.
Last year’s quinella Jaguar Mail and Meiner Kitz were both slated to come to Melbourne, but pulled out for different reasons.
A strong field has been assembled for this year’s running.
Runners include Japan Cup winner (on protest) Rose Kingdom, last year’s Melbourne Cup runner Tokai Trick, 2009 Tenno Sho winner Meiner Kitz, Prix du Cadran winner Gentoo, one time Japan Cup runner up Oken Bruce Lee, Japanese Derby winner Eishin Flash and the in form To The Glory.
Melbourne jockey Craig Williams, who rode Jaguar Mail to victory last year, has the ride on Jamil in the hope that he may emerge as a Melbourne Cup contender.
The field, in racebook and barrier order, is as follows:
1/Beat Black/4c/58/Yasunari Iwata
2/Hiruno d’Amour/4c/58/Shinji Fujita
3/Namura Crescent/6h/58/Ryuji Wada
4/Rose Kingdom/4c/58/Yutaka Take
5/Gentoo(FR)/7g/58/Dominique Boeuf
6/Pelusa/4c/58/Norihiro Yokoyama
7/Makani Bisty/4c/58/Futoshi Komaki
8/Meiner Kitz/8h/58/Masami Matsuoka
9/To the Glory/4c/58/Hirofumi Shii
10/Tosen Crown/7h/58/Teruo Eda
11/Gestalt/4c/58/Yusuke Fujioka
12/Cosmo Helenos/4c/58/Yuta Nakatani
13/Jamil/5h/58/Craig Williams
14/Tokai Trick/9h/58/Yuga Kawada
15/Eishin Flash/4c/58/Hiroyuki Uchida
16/Oken Bruce Lee/6h/58/Suguru Hamanaka
17/Forgettable/5h/58/Genki Maruyama
18/Cosmo Meadow(IRE)/4c/58/Yuji Tannai
The race jumps at 4:40pm AEST.
Written by Andrew Hawkins
