G1 Mile Championship

G1 Racing's Serifos (Jpn) (Daiwa Major {Jpn}) steamed home impressively from near the back of the pack to take the G1 Mile Championship at Hanshin on Sunday. Sent off at 8-1, he is the first 3-year-old colt to defeat his elders in the race since Stelvio (Jpn) (Lord Kanaloa {Jpn}) in 2018. Caught in midfield Serifos relaxed beautifully under Damian Lane as Piece Of Eight (Jpn) (Screen Hero {Jpn}) raced hard on the steel while shadowed by Falconia (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}), with that duo swapping positions in the backstretch....

Japanese champion Gran Alegria (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) signed off her career with her second consecutive G1 Mile Championship victory, her sixth top-level score, at Hanshin on Sunday. She is the first horse to win back-to-back Mile Championships since Daiwa Major (Jpn) (Sunday Silence) in 2006/07. Tabbed the heavy favourite at 70 cents on the dollar, the 5-year-old mare was content to race near the rear of the field as Ho O Amazon (Jpn) (King Kamehameha {Jpn}) sped through fractions of :23.70 and :47.60. Jockey Christophe Lemaire had a ton...

Although she left it until late, Gran Alegria (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) displayed a scintillating turn of foot once she found running room to rush by her rivals and claim the G1 Mile Championship at Hanshin on Sunday. It was the fourth Group 1 win for the daughter of Breeders' Cup heroine Tapitsfly and she is the eighth horse-after the runner-up Indy Champ (Jpn) (Stay Gold {Jpn})--to claim both mile events in Japan having earlier scored in the G1 Yasuda Kinen. The first filly or mare to claim the Mile...

A diverse group of 17 runners Sunday in Hanshin's G1 Mile Championship, the second leg of the Japan Autumn International Series. Headlining the 1,600-meter test, Gran Alegria (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) accounted for a pair of Goup 1 wins in her two latest starts--the Yasuda Kinen at Tokyo in June followed by Nakayama's Sprinters S. Oct. 4. The daughter of Grade I-winning Tapitsfly (Tapit) won last season's G1 Oka Sho over the same course and distance of this weekend's Mile. "She was in great condition for the Sprinters S., and...