Venue: Chukyo
Distance: 1800m
Value: ¥260,400,000 (Approx. US$1,736,000)
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the contest that started out as the Japan Cup Dirt, the dirt surface companion to its turf-based big brother the Japan Cup. The race has evolved in that time, moving from Tokyo to Nakayama to Tokyo to Hanshin to Chukyo, and been rebranded so that it now stands on its own feet as the JRA’s end-of-year dirt track championship race.
The Champions Cup gained its own identity in 2014, when the JRA abandoned its fairly fruitless mission to attract top-class international dirt track runners to Japan at year’s end, came up with the new name, and moved to left-handed Chukyo. Since then, it has established a solid footing as a key contest in Japan’s Group 1 calendar.
A New Wave Emerging?
Lemon Pop has won this race for the past two years but his retirement – and Forever Young’s targets being offshore – means there is an opening for a new star to emerge. Cue two exciting emerging talents, the lightly-raced four-year-old W Heart Bond and the three-year-old Narukami. It promises to be a fascinating clash.
Narukami, like Lemon Pop before him, races in the Godolphin blue and his rise to prominence has been sensational in only six starts, winning five and usually spreadeagling his rivals. His front-running approach served him particularly well last time out when he won the NAR’s Jpn1 Japan Dirt Classic at Oi, hammering the Haneda Hai and Tokyo Derby hero Natural Rise whose Dirt Triple Crown ambitions were smashed in second-place.
Meanwhile, Silk Racing’s W Heart Bond has won six from seven career starts. She too has posted some wide-margin victories, though her latest winning margin, in the G3 Miyako Stakes, was only a neck. That doesn’t tell the whole story though as W Heart Bond kicked well clear, seemed to idle and responded when the challenger came to her.
Will A Dirt Switch Turn Sixpence’s Career?
Carrot Farm has an interesting surface switcher in the four-year-old Sixpence. He was a G1 Tokyo Yushun hopeful in the spring of 2024 after winning his first three starts including the G2 Spring Stakes. But he was only ninth in the Derby. He bounced back, winning the G2 Mainichi Okan that autumn and started this year with victory in the G2 Nakayama Kinen. But after failing to cut it in the G1 Osaka Hai and the G1 Yasuda Kinen this spring, connections opted for a change.
Trainer Sakae Kunieda – of Almond Eye fame – turned Sixpence’s attention away from turf and his only subsequent start was his first on the dirt in the Jpn1 Mile Championship Nambu Hai at Morioka. He was second behind the Champions Cup stalwart, Wilson Tesoro, and this race will surely determine whether the son of Kizuna has a future as a top-level dirt track racer.
Is This Wilson’s Year At Last?
Wilson Tesoro has done the rounds plenty in Japan, competing in a host of JRA and NAR dirt track features as well as taking in the G1 Saudi Cup and G1 Dubai World Cup – he has placed fourth in each. His two efforts in placing second in this race in 2023 and 2024 are arguably his best, and with no Lemon Pop around this time, perhaps it will be his day to shine. He’s six years old, though, fully exposed and despite his Jpn1 Mile Championship Nambu Hai win in October, he must improve on his fifth last time in the Jpn1 JBC Classic at Funabashi.
Café Is Doing It For The Family
This year’s G1 Kentucky Derby also-ran Luxor Café has a stellar Japanese dirt pedigree, his brother being the two-time G1 February Stakes winner Café Pharoah. But Café Pharoah never got his act together in the Champions Cup, finishing sixth as second favourite in 2020 and a plain 11th a year later.
Luxor Café gets his chance to step up for his family and a Group 3 win last time in the Musashino Stakes looked like a good prep for this contest. But prior to that he had been a long way back when third behind Narukami in the Japan Dirt Classic. US-based French ace Florent Geroux will ride him this time, his first ride in a JRA Group 1.
Old Timers Link Up
Two experienced veterans, the 56-year-old riding legend Yutaka Take and the eight-year-old galloper Meisho Hario, will team up in an effort to put the rising stars in their place. But no horse older than six has ever won the Champions Cup, while the oldest jockey to succeed was Yukio Okabe, at age 52 in 2000. Five three-year-olds have won, four four-year-olds, 12 five-year-olds, and four six-year-olds.
Take has won the race four times, but not since 2007. Meisho Hario has four Jpn1 victories to his name on the NAR but has never won a JRA Group 1 and his two efforts in the Champions Cup have seen him finish fifth in 2023 and seventh in 2021. But he was a good second last time in the Jpn1 JBC Classic. ∎
