2025 G1 Kikuka Sho
Venue: Kyoto Racecourse
Distance: 3000m
Value: ¥434,000,000 (about US$2,894,000)
The Kikuka Sho is the last leg of Japan’s Triple Crown, the equivalent of the world’s first classic, the English St Leger, and is run at Kyoto over 3000 metres. The contest, which was first staged in 1938, has been won by some of Japan’s greats, including the most recent Triple Crown winners Contrail, Orfevre and Deep Impact.
There is no Triple Crown on the line this time, though. In fact, there is not one classic winner in the field, with the Satsuki Sho winner Museum Mile and the Tokyo Yushun hero Croix Du Nord absent from the likely 20-horse line-up.
This puts the focus instead upon the main Kikuka Sho trials, the G2 Kobe Shimbun Hai and the G2 Asahi Hai St Lite Kinen, as well as the late developing colts that have progressed through lower key summer campaigns.
Lemaire’s Hat-Trick Bid
Japan’s seven-time champion jockey Christophe Lemaire has won the Kikuka Sho four times in total and has a good chance of making it three in a row, having won the race the past two years on Durezza (2023) and Urban Chic (2024). Urban Chic carried the colours of Silk Racing, and after winning the last leg of the fillies’ Triple Crown, the Shuka Sho last week on Embroidery, Lemaire will wear the pale blue and red spots again, this time in tandem with Energico.
The colt is the pre-race market leader despite having raced only four times, twice in Graded stakes class. But he won his first three races, capping an emergent spring season with victory in the Tokyo Yushun trial, the G2 Aoba Sho over 2400m, from a bunch of Kikuka Sho reopposers. He was second last time – stepping out off a summer break – against older rivals in the G3 Niigata Kinen at 2000m, behind the G1 Victoria Mile third Shirankedo.
Kunieda’s Last Chance
Sakae Kunieda has trained plenty of top horses in his time, notably the fillies’ Triple Crown heroines Apapane and the great Almond Eye. But in a storied career that stretches back to 1990, he has never managed to land one of the three colts’ Triple Crown races, the Satsuki Sho, the Tokyo Yushun or the Kikuka Sho. At 70 years of age, with mandatory retirement looming at the end of February 2026, this Kikuka Sho is his last opportunity to nail one of those classics.
It is perhaps fitting that his final classic runner is a son of Apapane, the Black Tide colt Amakihi. The Kaneko Makoto Holdings homebred has won three of six starts and after placing fifth behind Energico in the Aoba Sho in late April he won his Kikuka Sho lead-in – the Aganogawa Tokubetsu for horses that had won two races – by a length and a half as the 1.5 favourite.
Two Trials
With neither the Satsuki Sho nor the Tokyo Yushun winners in the field, Shohei and Eri King represent the pick of the classic form, having placed third and fifth in the Derby, the Tokyo Yushun. And those two are also the leading candidates out of one of the principal trials, the 2400m G2 Kobe Shimbun Hai, in which Eri King defeated Shohei by a neck. A length and three quarters back in third was the Tokyo Yushun eighth and Satsuki Sho fourth Giovanni.
The other big trial is the G2 St Lite Kinen over 2200m which Satsuki Sho winner Museum Mile won from Yamanin Bouclier who had fellow Kikuka Sho contender Red Bande a neck behind him in third. Yamanin Bouclier carries the blue silks of Hajime Doi whose Yamanin prefixed horses were in good form this summer, winning a couple of Graded stakes, while Yamanin Bouclier himself notched a ‘two wins’ contest in late June.
But others have progressed through the summer season, too, notably Aoba Sho third Gotzschtal a two-time winner since, in June and August; Rex Novus who won three from four in the summer months; Mirage Knight, a two-time winner in August; and Excite Bio who won the G3 Radio Nikkei Sho in late June.
Sasaki’s First Kikuka Sho
Daisuke Sasaki gets the leg-up on Red Bande in what will be the first Kikuka Sho for a rider seemingly going places. The 21-year-old really caught the eye during the summers of 2023 and 2024 riding at Hakodate and Sapporo, ending those campaigns – his second and third seasons – with 68 and 77 wins. This term he already has 76 wins on the board and is earning rides in the big races with greater frequency.
So far his seven Graded stakes wins have all been achieved in Group 3 contests but he has a good outside chance of success aboard Red Bande who followed his maiden win with a very close fourth in a blanket finish to the Aoba Sho won by Energico. The colt won at Tokyo in June before running third in the St Lite Kinen, all under Sasaki.
Sires On The Ropes
Star stallion Kitasan Black won the Kikuka Sho in 2015 and is responsible for four runners in the race this time, while his sire Black Tide has one contender; Japan’s leading sire Kizuna has three runners and the late Duramente has two. But at the other end of the scale, two stallions that desperately need a boost are also represented: Rey De Oro has My Universe and Excite Bio, and Bricks And Mortar relies on his son Golzschtal.
Both stallions are in dire need of a Group 1 winner to boost their failing careers. The prices paid for their stock at the sales have been nothing to write home about and they ranked low down among this year’s Shadai-based stallions in numbers of mares covered: while Equinox covered 206 mares, Kitasan Black 198 and Kizuna 185, Rey De Oro covered 61 and Bricks And Mortar only 47. This Kikuka Sho could be make or break for both sires. ∎
