Tiger Roll eat your heart out! Jumper in Japan takes earnings past £5.7 million

Oju Chosan, the veteran darling of Japan's jump racing scene, took his earnings to beyond £5.7 million on Saturday with a remarkable sixth victory in the Nakayama Grand Jump.

The 11-year-old started favourite to win the race, with a first prize of £400,000, for trainer Shoichiro Wada and jockey Shinichi Ishigami, and was settled in mid-division in the nine-runner field.

On the run for home, after the second-last Oju Chosan chased second favourite Blason D'Amour, jumping the last upsides his younger rival and then mowing him down to win by a length and a quarter.

Meiner Leone lunged late, finishing half of a length further back in third.

The winning son of Stay Gold, out of Symboli Kris S's unraced daughter Shadow Silhouette, was landing his 20th race on his 38th career start.

His spectacular haul includes nine Japanese jump Grade 1s - the 2016, 2017 and 2021 Nakayama Daishogai, and the 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022 Nakayama Grand Jump. He did contest the 2021 renewal but his streak was broken as he could manage only fifth.

On the Flat he has two wins from eight starts.

To lend some perspective to his earnings of 941,377,000 yen, Tiger Roll, twice the winner of the £1m Grand National, retired this year with prize-money of £1,437,256 to his name - a fine haul for a jumper in Ireland or Britain but rather put in the shadows by Oju Chosan's equivalent of £5,700,216.

Ishigami, who was riding in his 1,000th steeplechase, said: "I can't say any words other than that was really wonderful. Unlike in last year's Daishogai, I chased Blason D'Amour this time, and his response was good enough to beat him. I thought that we would be able to win if we could hold the other horses coming behind.

"I was thinking of a milestone for this race, my 1,000th riding in steeplechase races, so I would like to say thank you to Oju for winning."

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