BRINGING ASIAN RACING TO THE WORLD
Mitsu Nakauchida’s Group 1 winner is in fine fettle after travelling to Dubai and back and will be suited by the return to a mile at Tokyo.
13 April 2023
Serifos is being aimed at the Yasuda Kinen at Tokyo in June, having pleased his trainer Mitsumasa Nakauchida since arriving back in Japan from Dubai.
Last November’s G1 Mile Championship hero contested the G1 Dubai Turf at Meydan last month, but despite travelling like the potential winner into the home straight that night, the four-year-old flattened out through the final 200 metres.
“The distance found him out in the Dubai Turf,” Nakauchida told Asian Racing Report. “He looked like he was going to take everything down going into the straight but he stopped, he was one-paced in the end. He just couldn’t stay that last 200 metres.”
Serifos finished fifth under Damian Lane in the 1800m contest, behind Lord North, and will step back to 1600m in Japan’s late spring feature for milers. The chestnut son of Daiwa Major has won five of his nine starts, with all bar the Dubai race being at a mile.
Nakauchida – JRA champion trainer in 2021 and currently five wins clear at the top pf the table – has been pleased with how Serifos handled his first-time travel overseas.
“I’m actually proud of him, that he took everything well, all the travelling, the new environment, racing in the night-time, he took everything well and that will have matured him mentally and physically too,” Nakauchida said.
“He had a good journey back from Dubai and he recovered really well in quarantine over five days. I saw him early this week and he gained his weight back already; it seems he recovered pretty good.”
Meanwhile, the trainer is looking forward to teaming up with Hong Kong’s Australian ace Zac Purton when he sends Prognosis to Sha Tin for the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup later this month.
Prognosis rattles home to win the G2 Kinko Sho for Yuga Kawada. (Photo by JRA)
“I haven’t used Zac Purton before but he’s a proven jockey, he’s champion in Hong Kong, so I’m confident with him,” Nakauchida said. “And we saw when he won the Doncaster Mile, he can ride anywhere in the world, he’s a world class jockey. He knows the course, he knows where to be in a race there and that will help the horse, I hope.”
The lightly-raced five-year-old won the G2 Kinko Sho at Chukyo under Yuga Kawada last month and is one of three likely Japanese contenders expected to line up in the 2000m feature, along with Geraldina and Danon The Kid.
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