Overlapping schedules

"Sorry for the trouble again today."

"Leave it to me, Trainer Dragon Wada."

As he spoke, Yutaka Take, dressed in his racing silks, bowed quite earnestly to Wada, who was wearing a suit.

For an instant, the scene before me lost all sense of reality.

The racing fans nearby who noticed it also began wearing peculiar expressions, murmuring things like "Huh?" and "Now that's a rare sight."

This happened before the second race on the first day of the World All-Star Jockeys.

My attention soon shifted back from the distant scene to Ryan Moore, who was warmly interacting with fans at the rail.

Although he said he was still nowhere near a hundred percent recovered, Moore had read the flow of the previous race from the outset. Advancing steadily from the middle stages, he had seized the initiative late on and secured the win.

Even during the parade for the second race, the fans by the rail remained enthusiastic, mixing cries of "Welcome back!" and "Congratulations!" into their cheers.

After crossing the track entrance line, Moore smiled and waved around him like the other jockeys, then took the autograph boards being passed over the rail, bent down, and carefully signed his name.

This was Sapporo, after all—

At that thought, I hastily lowered my head and set off before the parade ended.

But plenty of other fans had the same idea, and the walkway leading to the stands quickly became packed.

After spending several minutes in the surging crowd, I finally reached the area in front of the finish line, only to find the second race had already ended.

The next moment, a perfectly synchronized chant of "Sakai!" rang out beside me, as though the crowd had been professionally trained.

—There was no need to look. The winner was Jockey