Mile Championship (G1) - Preview (1)

2008 Mile Championship (G1)

The 26th Mile Championship, to be held on Nov. 22 at Kyoto Racecourse, welcomes guests Sahpresa and Eva's Request while it bids farewell to a certain veteran of the Japan Racing Association - 8-year-old Company, who won the Tenno Sho (Autumn) on Nov. 1 at Tokyo to become the oldest winner of a Grade 1 race in Japan, and will retire following the Mile Championship.

The Mile Championship is the second race of the 1.2 billion yen Japan Autumn International, the second-year series offering a potential 100 million yen bonus for any winner of the ten major Grade 1 races designated by the JRA who enters; 4 year-old fillies Sahpresa of the United States and Irish bred Eva's Request are not eligible for the bonus.

The Mile Championship, for 3-year-olds and above, was created in 1984 to help bolster the short distance program of the JRA, which for long had been built around long-distance races. The race has been held at Kyoto during the third week of November since the first running, and is regarded as the autumn counterpart to the Yasuda Kinen, determining the best miler during the second half of the campaign.

It began accepting foreign entries since 1998 (a maximum of nine are allowed), and was promoted to an international Grade 1 race in 2004. Former winners of the Mile Championship have been some of the JRA's most popular horses of all time, from Nihon Pillow Winner to Oguri Cap, and more recently,Taiki Shuttle, Durandal and Hat Trick.

A full field of 18 starts on the back stretch of the outer oval, which runs flat for close to 600 meter before turning right into the famous Kyoto hill. The track rises four meters over 400 meters, and then dips into the final bend preceding a straight which stretches for 400 meters to the finish line. The Mile Championship is a relatively fast race; the winning time in each of the last four years was under 1 minute, 33 seconds.

100 million yen is offered to the winner. Post time is at 3:40 p.m.