Saturday the Nakayama Grand Jump returns to its home track but no overseas runners in this year's line up.
This seems a great pity when you think of the good record of the overseas runners in the past, such as St Steven and Karasi. Majesty Bid is arguably the best chaser in Japan but it is the first time he is tackling this course, which can be tricky with its undulations. Should he encounter problems, two runners who recently switched to jumping with great sucess will be waiting to pounce. They are Basel River and Agnes Run Up. The latter is up in class for this but has shown such a liking for jumping that connections are eager to take up the challenge.
The Satsuki Sho or Japanese 2000 Guineas is over 2000m. The Spring Stakes is generally considered the trial for this, but the Yayoi Sho has also produced some winners. Grandezza won the Spring Stakes and will be ridden by Mirco Demuro who is very enthusiastic about the horse. Cosmo Ozoro won the Yayoi which was a bit of a surprise, and Trip ran second. Favourite was Adam's Peak but he flopped and remains to convince. So we like Grandezza, Trip and Deep Brillante, another Deep Impact out of a Loup Sauvage dam, and Iwata will ride.
