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The 72nd race to mark the opening of the 2023 Central Horse RacingZhongshan Gold Cup(GIII, turf 2000m) is last year’s Kisaragi Award winner andmatten loureoBreaking through the 3-win class in the previous race, and has a track record of finishing 3rd in the Hopeful Stakes at the age of 2LagulfAiming for the first heavy prize by showing a solid run in the turf 2000m heavy prize frontAratawinner of the Radio NIKKEI AwardferngrottenAnd so on.
The average dividend for the past 10 years is 58,737 yen, a handicap that is not easy. Meanwhile,Lagulfis this time “dangerous hot horse” target.
■ For 4-year-old horses, experience at 3-year-olds speaks for itself
Lagluff, who ran well in the Hopeful Stakes at the age of 2 and finished 3rd, was expected to perform well in the Classics, but was hampered by the high wall of his generation, finishing 8th in the Satsuki Sho. In the summer, he restarted from a conditional race, won the 2-win class, placed 5th in the Centlight Memorial, and broke through the 3-win class in his previous race, steadily climbing the stairs and returning to the heavy prize front again.
The pattern of advancing to the Nakayama Gold Cup with the 3-win class in the previous race as a step, although there is an example in 2009 where Higurasu won with the momentum of consecutive wins, in the past 10 years[1, 1, 2, 10]is basically an open race. Horses that have competed in graded races tend to be more advantageous.
In terms of results by age group, there is no big difference between 4- to 7-year-olds, and 4-year-old horses are[23219]which is the next best performance after 5-year-olds in terms of win ratio, top-to-top ratio, and multiple win ratio. However, looking at the breakdown, 5 out of the 7 top 3 finishers had a track record of finishing in the top 3 in mixed graded horses. This will be Lagluff’s first time competing against an older horse in a graded race, and I wonder if his lack of experience as a three-year-old will be exposed here.
In addition, Lagluff has won 4 races so far, but all of the wins went up and marked the fastest time in 3F, and 3 of the 4 wins were on long straight courses such as Tokyo and Niigata. On the other hand, in the races where he lost, especially in Nakayama, he suffered a crushing defeat without showing his characteristics, such as the Satsuki Sho and the Centlight Memorial two races ago, so Tokyo and Niigata may be more suitable in terms of course suitability. No.
His GI achievements at the age of 2 and his momentum in winning the condition class are likely to attract a lot of support.LagulfHowever, I can’t put as much trust in it as my taste, so I decided to take the plunge and say, “EraseI want to go.
Text Yutaka Ishikawa
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