Keita Tosaki won the Korea Sprint aboard Dragon Welds on Sunday, then got a face full of champagne trying to celebrate it.
The popular Japanese jockey had barely finished celebrating his G3 Korea Sprint win when the presentation went awry, the bottle erupting into his face and leaving Tosaki drenched – and Japanese racing fans with another addition to his growing collection of viral moments.
The race itself had gone rather more smoothly.
The Hideaki Fujiwara-trained Dragon Welds tracked Yoshito Yahagi’s American Stage before the Japanese pair broke clear turning for home, then drew away inside the final 200 metres to win the 1200m sand feature by two lengths in 1m 10.7s.
The victory completed a Japan one-two, extended Dragon Welds’ winning streak to four, gave him his first overseas Group-race success and delivered Japan a fifth Korea Sprint.
Then came the presentation.
Tosaki was handed a large bottle of champagne and instructed to spray it towards an empty area. He never got that far.
“I was told to give the bottle four big shakes and then spray it towards an area where nobody was standing,” Tosaki told Tokyo Sports. “But while I was shaking it, my finger suddenly slipped with a pop and the champagne ended up spraying all over me.”
Footage shows Tosaki carefully taking in those instructions before the bottle erupts prematurely, catching him full in the face and leaving the jockey, for a moment at least, comprehensively beaten by his own celebration.
Tosaki saw the funny side.
“That somehow feels very much like me – never quite managing to look cool,” he said.
The Korea Racing Authority’s official broadcast subsequently posted footage of the incident on YouTube and the clip quickly reached racing circles in Japan, climbing as high as No. 2 on Yahoo Japan’s overall trends.
Fans delighted in the entire sequence, from Tosaki’s uncertain expression as he listened to the instructions to the champagne exploding before he could aim the bottle away.
“People of Korea, this is the TOSAKI we love in Japan,” one wrote. Another joked that he had provided “another new comedy moment”, while others compared the mishap to a classic Japanese comedy sketch.
One fan perhaps best captured the affection behind the reaction: “Our Tosaki never lets us down.”
But the joke had started before the champagne bottle entered the picture.
Tosaki opened his winning interview with “Very Very Mal”, combining the phrase that has become his calling card with mal, the Korean word for horse.
This time, at least, it was deliberate. Tokyo Sports reported that Tosaki had checked the Korean word with an interpreter beforehand so he could give the catchphrase a local twist.
“Very Very” has followed Tosaki since his 2025 Dubai Sheema Classic win aboard Danon Decile. Asked about his horse in English immediately afterwards, an excited Tosaki intended to say “very good horse”, but nerves cost him the word “good” and produced the now-famous “Very Very Horse” instead.
The accidental catchphrase took on a life of its own. Tosaki has since embraced it, launching the Beriberi Channel on YouTube and releasing his first book this year with “Beriberi” in the title.
So when the champagne clip took off in Japan, fans already had the perfect line waiting. One dubbed it a “very, very champagne shower straight to the face”.
“The Korean fans gave us such passionate support, and I was really happy about that,” Tosaki told Tokyo Sports. “And with all the ‘Very Very’ stuff, I got excited too. I’d love to come back here and race again.”
Very very good horse. Very very bad champagne technique. ∎
