Three unbeaten fillies meet in Japanese 1000 Guineas

Three fillies – Cat Coin, Queens Ring, and Rouge Buck – risk unbeaten records in Sunday’s $1,533,842 Japanese 1000 Guineas for 3-year-old fillies at Hanshin Racecourse. Prerace expectations suggest that one of them will remain unbeaten after the Grade 1 race at about a mile on a right-handed turf course.

Rouge Buck, by the Sunday Silence stallion Manhattan Café, has a female family well known to American racing fans. She is out of Ginger Punch, who won the Eclipse Award as the champion older female of 2007. Trained by Bobby Frankel for Frank Stronach, Ginger Punch won 12 of 22 starts and $3,065,603 in a career highlighted by a win in the Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic at Monmouth Park in 2007.

Rouge Buck, owned by U. Carrot Farm and trained by Masahiro Otake, has won all three of her starts against males. She won the Kisaragi Sho at Kyoto Racecourse in February in her last start and is expected to be favored in the Japanese 1000 Guineas.

The other two unbeaten runners in the field of 18 have raced more recently. Cat Coin won the Grade 3 Queen’s Cup at Tokyo Racecourse on Feb. 14. Queen’s Ring won the Group 3 Fillies’ Revue at about seven furlongs on turf at Hanshin on March 15.

The Japanese 1000 Guineas is the first leg of a Triple Crown for fillies that includes the Japanese Oaks at Tokyo on May 24 and the Shuka Sho at Kyoto on Oct. 18.