8:33 p.m. Oh, no. Oh no, no, no, no, no! I won this race. I won Nakayama Kinen! Because the turf seemed to have dried more than yesterday, I decided that won't be good for Magic Sands to replace him with Ecoro Walz. So I finally won the first race this season. Then why, why is my trio payout smaller than the quinella payout? Why?

Ugh! I'm in the red! I shouldn't have chickened out on buying trifectas if this was the case. I could at least, have bought exactas since I knew it would be Lebensstil to win this race. Or I could even have put everything on win. These betting tickets would have brought back more! But I somehow chose betting tickets that has the worst cost for money.

It's almost miraculous how I always make the worst decisions. But well, I finally picked up my first win, though not satisfactory.

The End

Caterpillar

9:22 p.m. I'm not happy with yesterday's result even though it was my first win this season. Luckily, there's Nakayama Hinba Stakes this week although it's on Saturday. It should be a perfect race to blow off some steam, only if I could win it because Nakayama Hinba is run on Nakayama turf 1800m. As anyone can see, it's run on the same course in the same distance as Nakayama Kinen, which means that I might have a better shot at winning right after I've won Nakayama Kinen.

I think I don't need to change my approach from the way I called Nakayama Kinen. It could be said that basically, Nakayama Hinba also gives advantage to inner post drawers and front runners just like Nakayama Kinen. There is one thing however, that I realized after Nakayama Kinen. In order to perform well under the conditions of current Nakayama turf 1800m, horses not only need initial velocity to get good positions up front, but also need enough speed (and power) to keep the position so that they could take over the runaway on the short homestretch.

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Caterpillar

9:19 p.m. Checking out the trends of Nakayama Hinba Stakes concerning step races.

As already mentioned, the basical approach stays the same as Nakayama Kinen. Since Nakayama Hinba is run on the same course as well as in the same distance as Nakayama Kinen, the pace rarely gets tight just like Nakayama Kinen. And because it usually runs at a leisurely pace, again horses that have finished above third place in either of their recent two (or three) races are performng well.

However, there seem to be a few more horses that haven't performed well in either of their recent two (or three) step races compared to Nakayama Kinen, so I tried analyzing the characteristics of each horse.

Shinryokuka the third place winner of Nakayama Hinba 2024, has been losing below fifth place in all five of the races she ran before Nakayama Hinba, but she'd finished second in Hanashin Juvenile Fillies behind Liberty Island six races earlier to Nakayama Hinba Stakes. It's the case where the high performance at a G1 race has backfired. You might call her the Soul Stirling type in Nakayama Kinen.

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Caterpillar

7:29 p.m. To be precise, there were three horses in the past 10 years that performed well in Nakayama Hinba Stakes, despite finishing below fourth place in their previous three races before Nakayam Hinba. Apart from the already mentioned Shinryokuka, were 2022 champion Kurino Premium and the third place winner of 2016, Meisho Suzanna.

Kurino Premium and Meisho Suzanna hadn't performed well in G1 and in that sense, different from Shinryokuka's (or Soul Stirling's) case. Two things they had in common, though were that they both had a career of performing well on a turf 1800m course with tight corners, as well as that their most recent race before Nakayama Hinba Stakes were run at medium pace with the gap between the first and second halves being within +0.4 to -0.4 seconds. So it's better to have high aptitude to tight-curved, non-major distanced courses in order to perform well on Nakayama 1800m, while it also seems important to experience a relatively faster pace before running in Nakayama Hinba Stakes.

That makes sense. Running in a tighter pace could surely pep up the horses for the next race. And if the pepped up horses originally were highly suited for Nakayama 1800m, it won't come as a surprise if they performed well. Might as well look out for these pepped up group, too.

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Caterpillar

8:08 p.m. I've looked up the entrees of Nakayama Hinba Stakes to see if there were any Soul Stirling or Shinryokuka type and found three. Erika Express has finished second in Shuka-sho, while Stellenbosch is an Ohka-sho champion as well as runner-up for both Hanshin JF and Oaks. Bond Girl has also finished second in Shuka-sho. As Soul Stirling and Shinryokuka both performed well in Hanshin JF, perhaps Stellenbosch may be more closer than Erika Express or Bond Girl. Paradis Reine has also finished second in Queen Elizabeth Cup, though I think that might be a little different from Shinryokuka's case.

It looks like the feared rain won't fall. Even if it does, it's likely to be slight. I wonder what the track condition of Nakayama might be like after the rain on Tuesday? Well, it should be released tomorrow. All that matters now is the barrier draw. The entry has been closed today and the race is going to run with 16 horses BTW.

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Caterpillar

9:03 p.m. Cow was desperately trying to listen to the radio broadcasting of WBC Japan versus Taiwan game on TV. I felt sorry for him and downloaded Radiko onto my iPad so he could listen to the game while I work downstairs. I could work listening to the live streaming via my desktop. See what Netflix's exclusive distribution adds to the hassle while Mr. N-jima having good old friends back from his school baseball club, must be fully enjoying the game LIVE at Tokyo Dome.

Me, I've worked hard to figure out which horse to pick for Nakayama Hinba Stakes, ears listening to the streaming. Yamamoto wasn't good today. Can't blame him at this time of year, after what he's done last season.

The turf seems to be good to firm in reality, though it's announced to be good as of this morning. The rain hasn't dried off yet whereas there's still a chance of slight rain from tonight to early tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, I'm thinking that the turf would dry off by the time of the race since it's expected to get windy tomorrow. Currently remaining on my list are Paradis Reine, Bond Girl, Flaming Hoop, Stellenbosch, Angola Black, and Nishino Ti Amo. But I'm not sure about Paradis Reine as her condition puts a question mark. Stellenbosch is also unreliable forced to carry 57.5kg, considerably heavy weight for a female horse even though she's a G1 champion horse.

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Caterpillar

8:23 p.m. Just because I've done something I usually don't, look what happened. A disaster.

The turf wasn't as dry s I'd hoped it to be, so I added Erika Express in a hurry thinking that the front runners would be advantaged. But then, it didn't hit me that inner post drawers would also be much advantaged when the track condition is soft. I'm not good at adapting to changing circumstances.

Checked out Yayoi-sho in frustration, though I don't think I could avoid Admire Quads and Reichsadler, the first and second favored in win odds. It's a small-field race. I guess it's not worth betting on unless I could pinpoint the third place winner on a trifecta.

Well, I'll think about it some more.

The End

Caterpillar

8:36 p.m. Eventually, I bought trifectas for Yayoi-sho keying Admire Quads on first place with Reichsadler and Basse Terre on the second as well as third row. Another disaster. I shouldn't have bet on the race from the start.

I mean, look at the trio payout. 470 yen! What, are you kidding? You only get less than 500 yen even when you call the top 3 horses right? Gimme a break! Look at the trifecta payout. You call the top 3 horses in order and JRA is only going to pay back 4,820 yen!? It's ridiculous!

Will say that again. It's ridiculous!

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Caterpillar

8:32 p.m. The Chukyo races are finally beginning this week, with Kinko-sho kicking off as the first grade race. Quite a few competitors are entered such as last year's champion Queen's Walk, June Take, Douradores and Ho O Biscuits. The focus will also be on how Giovanni and Urban Chic might perform while they haven't been making good results lately.

Kinko-sho is intriguing, though I can't simply give up Nakayama either since we're having Spring Stakes, another 1800m race. As you already know, I've been struggling with Nakayama turf 1800m for the past month and now that I've come this far, I feel like I should stick to it to try one more time. But it does seem pretty tricky so what should I do?

Just saw the expected win odds for Spring Stakes which showed 1.9 for Crepuscular. Unbelievable, unreliable, and reidiculous! Isn't htat too overrated no matter how you look at it?

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Caterpillar

9:27 p.m. If I'm going to stick to Nakayama 1800m, there's no avoiding reflecting on Nakayama Hinba Stakes. I need to know what exactly I did wrong.

Nakayama Hinba Stakes was difficult to call for me for two things. One was the track condition, which turned out to be good to firm despite being in relatively good condition with fast records. Because the track condition was announced to be good to firm contrary to my expectation, I panicked and all the theories in my head got blown way. If I'd been calm enough to take in the information to link it to my memory, it may not have been that hard to come up with the potential horses to perform well on Nakayama turf 1800m.

Usually when the turf condition gets soft while the pace isn't so fast, the inner post drawers and front runners are much advantaged. It would be difficult for the outer post drawers to take over the horses running ahead of them because of the pace and the distance loss they are forced to bear. So if you wanted to perform well from an outer post, all you can do is to either go up front or sweep up the outside to gradually raise the position.

If there was no outer post drawer who could adopt either strategy, the top 3 finishers (or even more) would be dominated by inner post drawers. This is what happened in Nakayama Hinba Stakes.

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Caterpillar

8:37 p.m. The other thing that made it hard to call Nakayama Hinba Stakes was the formation. I guessed either Erika Express or Lesedrama would take the lead since they'd drawn outer posts, while Nishino Tiamo would go up front for the same reason. If things had played out as I had assumed, I thought the horses would form a tightly packed formation, which would make it difficult for inner post drawers to beak away from the group.

The problem was that I couldn't be sure about my assumption. But well, you never could be sure about how the race might unfold as unfortunately I'm not born with some special talent to forsee the future. So I guess I shouldn't blame myself too much about it. What I can improve, though is to be more careful. After all, I knew that the track condition would largely benefit the inner post drawers, so I should have paid more attention to the inner post drawers. Especially to horses like Beyond the Valley previously running in a dirt G1, which became a perfect pep race, or Ethelfleda, a Nakayama specialist carrying lighter weight.

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Caterpillar