At Kyoto on Sunday under sunny skies Cervinia won her second leg.

This was in the Shuka Sho G1, the third leg of the female triple crown or triple tiara, where under Christophe Lemaire she showed a great turn of foot to finish ahead of Bond Girl 14.5 under Yutaka Take with Stellenbosch third.  Cervinia is by Harbinger and had previously won the Yushun Himba or Japanese Oaks.  It will be interesting to see if she goes to the Japan Cup.  The longer trip should not be a problem.  Queen's Walk stumbled coming out of the gates and finished tailed off so one suspects an injury.

On Monday back at Tokyo the G2 Ireland Trophy Fuchu Himba was a race for 3yos but no geldings!  Another useless condition.  Brede Weg started favourite and obliged giving Lemaire a good weekend.  Second home was Scintillation 37.2 and third went to Masked Diva who had firmed in price enough to start favourite.  Harper finished at the wrong end of the field and there may be an issue there as well.

We were very sad to hear that Nanako Fujita has retired but it seems to be a case where she was more or less obliged to retire as an old mild misdemeanour had been resurrected by the press and the JRA were going to take further action, despite having settled the matter a couple of years ago.  Nanako is a popular jockey both in Japan and abroad where she has always been an excellent ambassador for Japan and she's only 27 so would have had many years of riding ahead of her.  It's hard enough being a jockey in the first place, then getting in to the JRA list and then being a female jockey getting in to the JRA and to lose someone as talented as Nanako over a storm in a tea cup is a blow to racing.