Mile options next for Gran Alegria but ten furlongs is still on the table
Gran Alegria (Deep Impact) will revert to a mile for her next start, after the head-to-head with Triple Crown-winning colt Contrail (Deep Impact) failed to occur in Sunday’s wet-track running of the Osaka Hai (Gr 1, 2000m), but jockey Christophe Lemaire has not written off another attempt at ten furlongs for the remarkable mare.
“A rematch on good ground will be very interesting and we could evaluate the level of each horse in better ground (more accurately) than on Sunday; Lei Papale had the big advantage in my opinion,” Lemaire told Asia Bloodstock News.
“Lei Papale won brilliantly and she’s definitely a very good horse and she will be very competitive in big races every time she runs, but Gran Alegria and Contrail can do much better than (we saw). I think we saw the true Lei Papale and we did not see the true Gran Alegria and Contrail.”
The unbeaten Lei Papale (Deep Impact) tore up the script with an all-the-way win at her first elite-level test – at double figure odds – as Gran Alegria, stepping beyond a mile for the first time, was unable to finish off her race and placed fourth. Odds-on favourite Contrail was third at his first start since he lost his unbeaten record in the Japan Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) last November, when second behind Almond Eye (Lord Kanaloa).
“The ground definitely was an issue for Gran Alegria, it was very soft ground and she’s got American blood in her pedigree so she was not made to swim in heavy ground. I think she can stay 2000 metres but on good ground,” Japan’s champion jockey continued.
“She ran a good race: she was travelling very well until the final stretch and then in that ground she found it too far. But her condition was very good, she settled very well. The ability in soft ground made the difference in the last two furlongs.
“Lei Papale is a light horse with some Kurofune blood and, for sure, she handled the ground much better than the other horses. I think Contrail had the same issue as Gran Alegria with the ground. It was a tough race for them first time out this year.”
Gran Alegria is a four-time Grade 1 winner at 1200 metres and a mile. Should trainer Kazuo Fujisawa and owner Sunday Silence Racing Co LTD opt to try again at 2000 metres, it raises the enticing prospect of all three clashing in the Tenno Sho Autumn (Gr 1, 2000m) on October 31, with Contrail’s connections already considering an autumn/winter campaign that will take in that race as well as the Japan Cup and Arima Kinen (Gr 1, 2500m).
More immediately, Lemaire is looking to orchestrate a repeat win in the Yasuda Kinen (Gr 1, 1600m) on June 6 with Gran Algeria, but before that, on May 16, the five-year-old might yet compete against her own sex in the Victoria Mile (Gr 1, 1600m).
“She will likely go to the Yasuda Kinen, I’m quite sure, and she might run the Victoria Mile two weeks before, if she’s in good shape. She could do both if she’s in really good shape, otherwise it will just be the Yasuda Kinen,” the Frenchman added.
Contrail was being hailed as something approaching the second coming of his late sire – an exceptional racehorse and breed-shaping stallion – in the afterglow of his Triple Crown success last year, but after two defeats on the bounce, Yoshito Yahagi’s charge will need a win on the board next time out if he is to put that kind of weight back into his sizable reputation.
The Osaka Hai outcome was the harbinger for a couple of upset results at Sha Tin on Monday, which did nothing to assuage the sense that Hong Kong racing really needs an influx of quality to its ranks.
With Classique Legend (Not A Single Doubt), Hot King Prawn (Denman) and Aethero (Sebring) all out of the equation now, the Sprint Cup (Gr 2, 1200m) was an opportunity for a handful of emerging sprinters to step up from the handicap grades and make their mark ahead of the Chairman’s Sprint Prize (Gr 1, 1200m) on Champions Day at the end of April.
Instead, the cracks in the veneer widened. Wellington (All Too Hard), the prime prospect after a recent Class 1 handicap victory, failed to nail a seventh win at his ninth start, and a couple of fellow promising four-year-olds, Sky Field (Deep Field) and Winning Dreamer (Deep Field), also showed that they are not ready to fill the void.
Amazing Star (Darci Brahma), an unfulfilled rising star of a season or two ago, defied odds of 178/1 to take his tally to seven wins from 21 runs. But success for a six-year-old, a horse pretty well exposed in the higher grades at that, was hardly a boost to the overall health of the ranks.
The first three home in the Sprint Cup had international ratings of 105, 107 and 103, low figures in the realm of Hong Kong’s top sprinters. The underwhelming reality is that the prime domestic lead-up to the Chairman’s Sprint Prize failed to unearth anything close to resembling a viable rival – at least on paper – to Japan’s Danon Smash (Lord Kanaloa), who is expected to return to Sha Tin having beaten Hong Kong’s best there in December’s Hong Kong Sprint (Gr 1, 1200m): and the best then was better than the best now.
But if the sprint division looks weak, the milers appear to be spread even thinner when Golden Sixty (Medaglia D’Oro) isn’t around. Hong Kong’s beacon horse sat out Monday’s Chairman’s Trophy (Gr 2, 1600m) with trainer Francis Lui saving his stable star for the main event, the Champions Mile (Gr 1, 1600m), on April 25.
The closely-matched Waikuku (Harbour Watch), Southern Legend (Not A Single Doubt) and Ka Ying Star (Cityscape) are the best of the rest in the division. Ka Ying Star was scratched on Monday due to lameness, Waikuku trailed in last, having bled, and the ageing veteran Southern Legend was unable to give away a soft lead to the admirable but hitherto limited 11/1 shot Mighty Giant (Power), who dictated fractions on the front end under Neil Callan and sealed a first success in Pattern company at the sixth attempt.
If Japanese connections decide to duck Golden Sixty, it is hard to envisage the champion-elect doing anything but win the Champions Mile and land a 14th consecutive win.
Last year’s Champions Day was an all-domestic affair due to Covid-19 travel restrictions and it struggled to find anything resembling gloss. This year, the returning Japanese challengers promise to bring the missing dazzle, lining up strong assaults on the Chairman’s Sprint Prize and the flagship race, the QEII Cup (Gr 1, 2000m), in particular.
Japan’s Fillies’ Triple Crown heroine Daring Tact (Epiphaneia) is among the potential team of QEII Cup raiders, and, to be fair, Hong Kong’s runners could be over-faced with the 2000-metre division hardly bursting with top-class talent either. The old champion Exultant (Teofilo) is clearly not the force he once was, so hopes could be pinned on Hong Kong Derby (Listed, 2000m) winner Sky Darci (Darci Brahma) to prove his merit. If that doesn’t work out – Golden Sixty aside – this year’s Champions Day risks resembling to some degree the closing years of the Singapore international races, when it was the Hong Kong horses who rolled up at Kranji, outclassed their inferior rivals on their own turf, and waltzed away with the Group 1 silverware.
Meanwhile, South Korea bucked the Easter upset trend with the welcome return to the winner’s arch at Busan on Sunday of Blue Chipper (Tiznow) at odds of 1.9. The 2019 Korea Sprint (Listed, 1200m) winner and Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile (Gr 1, 1600m) third was laid low with travel sickness and then pneumonia while in the US after his Breeders’ Cup exertions; by the time he was fit to fly, the coronavirus pandemic had hit, flight plans were in disarray, and then racing in Korea had shut down.
Having blown away the cobwebs from his enforced spell with a fifth-place effort at Busan in early February, the sight of Blue Chipper shrugging off topweight and driving clear of his rivals was a welcome sight, with racing in the nation presently facing not only pandemic blues but also a difficult political environment due to ongoing opposition from the influential anti-gambling bloc.
The immediate issue though is where next for Blue Chipper? With Covid-19 measures affecting racing’s modus operandi, the KRA has still not released a stakes race programme for 2021.