Japan riders prove superior
By
DAVID MCCARTHY
in Japan
Mikio Matsunaga, a West Japan based jockey, was a clear-cut winner of the $130,000 World Super Jockey Series which concluded in Osaka on Sunday.
Matsunaga, aged 22, who now leads the sensational young Yataka Take in the Japanese riding premiership this season, scored a first and a third placing in the first two rounds of the four race series on Saturday. A third placing in the final race, after a low scoring sixth in the first round on Sunday, gave him 39 points in all. Matsunaga finished well clear of his fellow Japanese rider, Michio Tanaka, who ran only one seventh placing in the first two rounds, but gained a win and a second placing on Sunday.
Sueo Masuzawa made a clean sweep of the major placings for Japanesebased jockeys by finishing third, with 30 points from a win and two second placings.
Willie Carson was the best Western jockey finishing fourth on 24 points, ahead of Katsumi Minai, of Japan (23 points), and Michael Kinane, of Ireland. (17)
Both New Zealand’s David Walsh and Australia’s Michael Clarke failed to draw competitive mounts in any of the races.
Walsh rode Hakuyo Command cleverly into fourth in the final race to finish with seven points, just ahead of the French rider, Freddie Head, and Clarke with four and three points respectively. Pat Eddery, the leading jockey in England, finished with eight points. Matsunaga won the equivalent of $30,000 in prizemoney for his success, plus the $lO,OOO riding fee for each race all riders received and his percentage of the winning stakes, which were worth $598,000.
For good measure, Matsunaga also rode the winner of the day’s feature race, a 2500 m Group Two turf race, with a winner’s purse of $470,000.
Matsunaga’s win gives riders from Japan two victories in the three world series to date.
Two years ago the French-based American, Cash Asmussen, was the winner, while Masato Shibata won last year.
The series was conducted on the turf and dirt tracks at the Hanshin Racecourse, which was hosting the series for the final time under present conditions.
The facilities at Hanshin are to be demolished and the tracks relaid at a cost of $4OO million. The course will be closed for nearly two years.
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Press, 5 December 1989, Page 48
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384Japan riders prove superior Press, 5 December 1989, Page 48
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