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The story
Six Pence, who won the Yasuda Kinen paired with Yutaka Take, sank to dead last in France’s G1 Prix Jacques le Marois, while Strauss also finished 9th. On 5ch, a wave of skepticism broke out over the team’s choice of track and the horse losing his response mid-race, and the discussion grew into a broader debate about how Japanese racing should handle overseas campaigns — and about the declining standing of European racing itself.
France’s G1 Prix Jacques le Marois
The overseas G1 Prix Jacques le Marois was run on the 16th over 1,600 meters on turf at Deauville, France. Six Pence (5-year-old colt, trained by Hiroyasu Tanaka), competing from Japan, finished last in 10th, while Strauss (5-year-old colt, Takei) came in 9th. After the race, the team left comments on the JRA’s official website.
Six Pence, who captured the G1 Yasuda Kinen in June alongside Yutaka Take, had carried heavy expectations. He broke well, but lost his response to the aids early and dropped to last, trailing even 9th-place Strauss.
Source: the-ans.jp / Original article here
What people said
Though I'd be shocked if he just waltzes to a win in the autumn Mile Championship after this
The whole strategy this time round was flawed to begin with
Still comes down to this, huh
Yeah, exactly.
If it were a horse on the level of Maurice or Kanaloa, I'd get it, but…
Strategic mistake
Just make sure that experience gets put back into Japanese racing
When they trained him on ground with a bit of moisture, he was slipping and sliding
On race day too, the penetrometer read 3.4, equivalent to 'yielding' going (per Green Channel's X post)
They may have been trying to run him where the ground looked better
For a straight course it'd be Kikuzawa, right
They're not machines, they don't always do what they're told
Guess his ability just isn't there
Kitasan Black got dropped by 120 lengths in the King George, so which sire's offspring would actually cut it then?
Wasn't the story that the outside part he ran on was the soggy ground,
while the inside wasn't wet but was all chewed up and bumpy?
Take and Takei are saying opposite things
Take says it was 'firm ground, suits Japanese horses,' while Takei says it was 'soft'
Huh? Not quite following,
but does that mean the Japanese entrants swept 1st and 2nd place — counting from the bottom?
Yeah, dead last was basically a solo run, way off the rest of the field
Can't imagine another top-tier contender ending up with Yutaka Take again
Gold Ship's a faint hope, but he'll probably vanish off-screen halfway down the stretch (Gold Ship is notorious for erratic, unpredictable running)
but Japanese horses hold up just fine on the world stage —
if anything, it's Britain and France that are turning into a Galápagos.
Japan's getting results in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, and Dubai.
It's just sprinters that aren't winning like they used to.
Dirt racing, meanwhile, is winning big.
Britain → Finally settled on their next chairman, but now another track's announced it's pulling out
France → Cash-strapped, though they're lining up various events to bring in money
Ascot, Epsom, Newmarket, and Sandown all announced they were pulling out, right?
Feels like the only notable G1s left were the International Stakes and the St Leger
The Jockey Club's announced it's pulling out too
Okabe barely won any G1s in his later years, right
Though Okabe was still winning G1s right up until just before he turned 54 too
After that his knee injury kept him from riding the way he wanted
Background and Key Points
The Prix Jacques le Marois is a Group 1 run each August at Deauville on France’s Normandy coast, one of Europe’s premier miler tests and traditionally a marquee target for Japanese raiders since it sits close on the calendar to the Yasuda Kinen, the JRA’s own top mile race run at Tokyo in June. Six Pence’s Yasuda Kinen win was itself an upset, and sending a horse straight from that into a top European field is a well-worn but risky JRA strategy, since European turf, smaller fields, and pace shapes differ sharply from Japan’s. Going readings matter enormously in Europe — the “penetrometer” figure cited in the thread is the French equivalent of the going stick, and a 3.4 reading corresponds to soft (“yielding”) ground, which suits a very different type of horse than the firm, fast Tokyo turf Six Pence is bred for.
The thread’s real fault line wasn’t the loss itself but its cause: some blamed a specific tactical error — running wide on the rail the team judged safer — while others argued the whole trip was misguided from the start, since a single Yasuda Kinen victory doesn’t equate to Group 1-winning class in Europe. Notably, Take and Takei gave contradictory accounts of the ground, which the thread flagged but never resolved.
What outside readers may miss is that Japan’s “overseas struggles” are narrower than the “Galápagos” framing suggests: JRA horses have been winning consistently in Dubai, Hong Kong, Australia, and increasingly on US dirt, while British and French racing has been the outlier — several historic tracks and sponsors withdrawing from top fixtures, a real structural decline the thread only touches on in passing.
*This article is compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread ‘Heartbreaking Last Place — What Happened to the G1 Horse and Yutaka Take? “He lost his response partway through,” “By the time the post parade was over…” — Team Speaks Out‘.
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