This was also the second time Koichi had seen a jockey claim his first Grade 1 victory.
Most jockeys had to fight for years, sometimes more than a decade, before earning their first Grade 1 win.
He was fairly satisfied with taking second place himself.
Of course, what pleased him most was that he had pinned Yasuo Iwata to the inside, preventing the accident that had originally occurred.
"Sasaki, you did that on purpose, didn't you?"
After the race, Kenichi Ikezoe walked over to him and asked quietly.
As someone who had been boxed in on the inside himself, he had naturally seen what happened up ahead.
He had not expected Koichi Sasaki's tactical skills to have improved so much. He had deliberately left a little room for his opponent to move up, then boxed him in.
Probably no one had expected Koichi Sasaki to pull a move like that.
Nothing like this had happened in over a year of racing, so everyone had assumed he would never do it. Today's race had clearly been a wake-up call.
"I didn't do anything. It just happened that way."
Koichi spoke calmly as he washed his hands.
He had deliberately left that opening because he knew the number eighteen horse beside him would keep moving forward. Its speed had not dropped at all.
The pace of a top-level sixteen-hundred-meter race was simply too fast.
He still had some trouble adjusting to it.
He had ridden plenty of three-year-old Newcomer Races and Maiden Races before, but those were on an entirely different level.
"I understand, but it's best not to let what happens on the track spill over off it. We'll all still be racing together in the future, after all."
Kenichi Ikezoe nodded before continuing.
Today had been a major victory for