Deep Impact heavy favorite

Deep Impact, already being compared to Japanese Triple Crown winner Symboli Rudolf, promises to be a short-priced favorite in Sunday's $2.17 million Satsuki Sho, or Japanese 2000 Guineas, at Nakayama Racecourse near Tokyo.

A Sunday Silence colt out of an English Oaks runner-up and German Group 1 winner, Wind in Her Hair, Deep Impact is undefeated after three starts. Trained by Yasuo Ikee, he has already won over the Satsuki Sho course and distance, having taken the 1 1/4-mile Grade 2 Yayoi Sho as the 1-5 choice last time on March 6. Yutaka Take, who rode Deep Impact home that day through a final three-eighth of a mile in 34.10 seconds, will be in the saddle once again.

Challenging will be Dance in the More, a son of Dance in the Dark who took the 1 1/8-mile Grade 2 Spring Stakes at Nakayama March 20, but who has drawn widest of all in post 18. Another Sunday Silence colt, Rosenkreuz, is coming off a victory in the 1 1/4-mile Grade 3 Mainichi Hai at Hanshin, but Deep Impact faces bigger threats from the second- and third-place finishers in the Yayoi Sho, Meiner Recolte and Admire Japan. Meiner Recolte was Japan's champion 2-year-old by virtue of his victory in last December's one-mile Grade 1 Futurity Stakes at Nakayama.