New Year: Awards and Auction

New Year's, the first Friday with the kadomatsu still not taken down.

Though the official award ceremony hadn't started yet, the results for this year's JRA Awards and NAR Grand Prix had already been leaked in advance through quite a few media connections.

On the NAR side, the various award results didn't differ much from expectations.

Though the fact that Horse of the Year was jointly awarded to Sakuya and Atalanta was somewhat unexpected.

On the JRA side.

"Mejiro Atalanta selected for JRA Award for Best Older Filly or Mare."

Searching TWKAN on Google.

After getting news like that from someone claiming to be a JRA staff member, I felt a little surprised.

I had initially thought the JRA Awards were restricted solely to Central Racing.

Because of that, even after Atalanta won the Arima Memorial, I hadn't held out hope for any categories other than Best 2-Year-Old Colt.

I even took it for some kind of prank or scam call at first and brushed it aside, until congratulatory messages arrived back-to-back from associates, making me realize Atalanta had indeed successfully won a JRA Award.

More than the joy of winning an award as an owner, it was a deep emotion knowing Atalanta's hard work hadn't gone unnoticed.

It really is wonderful—

At the New Year's end-of-year party, although it should have been the natural time to map out plans for the year, it was somewhat hard to set concrete goals this year—or rather, it felt like a year worth trying without deliberately setting any goals.

As expected, I just want to have them run in suitable races.

Though the green omamori supply was already completely depleted.

"Same as last year, then..."

"Truly something the president would say."

As expected, I got teased like that by the staff.

Of course,