Mile Championship (G1) - Preview (1)

2010 Mile Championship

Sahpresa

Immortal Verse

Kyoto Racecourse

The 28th Mile Championship on Nov. 20 at Kyoto Racecourse is again up for grabs with no clear favorite among the 22 who have been nominated for the 208 million yen race.

Like this past weekend's Queen Elizabeth II Commemorative Cup, the Mile Championship will feature a pair of female horses from France in 6-year-old Sahpresa and 3-year-old Immortal Verse, the former who will be running in the race for the third straight year. They will be going up against the likes of Grade 1 winners A Shin Forward, the defending champion, last year's 2-year-old champion Grand Prix Boss, Shuka Sho champion Marcellina and this year's Yasuda Kinen champion Real Impact.

Just like last season, the Teruya Yoshida-owned Sahpresa is coming off victory in the Sun Chariot Stakes at Newmarket in late September, making her eligible for a winning bonus of 70 million yen in the Mile Championship. Second place will earn the American-born mare 28 million yen, 18 million yen for taking third.

Immortal Verse, having won the Prix de Jacques le Marois at Deauville, is also good for the bonus which goes to any winner of 11 overseas Grade 1 races designated by the Japan Racing Association.

By Sahm out of Sorpresa by Pleasant Tap, Sahpresa, who has eight wins from 20 starts, finished third in the Mile Championship two years ago and fourth last year in a race won by A Shin Forward in record time.

The Rodolphe Collette-trained Sahpresa has been rock solid this season, with two victories in five starts - the last four under Frenchman Christophe Lemaire who is a regular visitor to Japan and has won his fair share of Grade 1 titles with the JRA. Lemaire will continue to take the reins for the Mile Championship.

Assistant trainer Vincent Vion said Sahpresa is shaping up fine for the race in which she could even become the betting favorite given the closeness of the competition.

"She's in good condition, and we're very pleased with the workout she had," Vion said on Thursday. "She's hitting her peak just at the right time. We'll decide on her training schedule from hereon once she moves out to Kyoto Racecourse. We need to check on how she copes with the travel before we decide on anything."

The young Immortal Verse, trained by Robert Collette, will make her Japanese debut in the Mile Championship. By Pivotal out of the Sadler's Wells mare Side of Paradise, Immortal Verse has won four times in eight career starts and finished third in her most recent race, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on Oct. 15.

She is a mile specialist, having raced at the distance in all but one of her races. Immortal Verse had been ridden by Gerald Mosse the last three times out, but her jockey for the Mile Championship will be Christophe Soumillon. Immortal Verse will come with a seal of approval from groom Nadege Ouakli.

"She's got her appetite and looks to be in very good physical condition," Ouakli said on Thursday. "She responded well in her workout this morning and is coming along really nicely. We've got to make the trip to Kyoto Racecourse tomorrow so we'll just have to see how it goes once we get to the racetrack. How she trains will depend on her condition in Kyoto."

The Mile Championship, for 3-year-olds and up, is the second leg of the Japan Autumn International, the four-race series in its fourth season of existence worth close to 1.5 billion yen.

The race was founded in 1984 to help bolster the short distance program of the JRA, which for long had been built around long distance races. The Mile Championship 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 at Tokyo in June, which determines the top miler during the first half of the season.

The Mile Championship began accepting horses from overseas in 1998 - a maximum of nine are currently allowed - and received international Grade 1 status in 2004. Past 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, Hat Trick and 2009 champion Company, who became the oldest horse to win a Grade 1 race at the age of 8.

A full field of 18 starts on the back stretch of the outer oval at the right-handed Kyoto track, which runs flat for close to 600 meter before turning into the famous hill. The course rises for four meters over 400 meters, then dips right into the final turn which invites a straight that runs for more than 400 meters to the finish line.

The Mile Championship is always a fairly fast race, with A Shin Forward winning last year in 1 minute 31.8 seconds. The winning time in each of the last five years (except 2009) has been under 1 minute, 33 seconds.

The prize money for the winner is 100 million yen, 40 million yen for the runnerup. Post time is set for 3:40 p.m.