TOKYO - Zenyatta would have been jealous of the cheers that Buena Vista earned after her win in the $6.7 million Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse on Sunday.

For the second consecutive year, Buena Vista was first past the wire in the Japan Cup. Last year, she was disqualified and placed second in a controversial decision. This year, there was a genuine celebration from an ontrack crowd of 103,816.

TOKYO - Buena Vista won the $6.7 million Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse on Sunday with a stretch rally that left the wildly popular mare in front through the final sixteenth. She led long enough for jockey Yasunari Iwata to fully realize the magnitude of the moment as it unfolded.

TOKYO - So far in 2011, Japanese owner Teruya Yoshida has won the Dubai World Cup with Victoire Pisa and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe with Danedream.

Few owners in the world have stables that can win both races in a lifetime, let alone a season. The accomplishments are not lost on Yoshida, who is part of the first family of Japanese racing.

“It’s amazing that it’s happened in one year,” he said on Friday. “I’ve had a lot of luck this year.”

TOKYO – The winner’s trophy for the Japan Cup has not left these shores in six years, since Alkaased won the 2005 running for British trainer Luca Cumani.

That time frame is the longest drought for foreign-based runners in the 30-year history of the race, which includes 14 foreign winners and 16 from the home team.

TOKYO – When the brothers Terikchand and Naipaul Chatterpaul claimed Mission Approved at Belmont Park in June 2010, they thought they were getting “a nice New York-bred,” Terikchand Chatterpaul remembers.

They were right. Mission Approved is a very nice New York-bred. He is also a Grade 1 winner in the Manhattan Handicap at Belmont Park in June and the only American representative in Sunday’s $6.7 million Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse.

In his first start after the claim, the Chatterpauls, who co-own Mission Approved, knew they had something better in their stable.

TOKYO – The walk to the winner’s enclosure after the 2010 Japan Cup was the strangest trek of its kind for horse owner Shunsuke Yoshida.

His Sunday Racing Co. partnership had finished one-two with Buena Vista and Rose Kingdom, only for Buena Vista, the 9-10 favorite, to be disqualified and placed second behind her 7-1 stablemate for causing interference in the stretch.

Never had winning such an important race felt so much like losing to Yoshida.

TOKYO – There will never be another autumn like 2011 for German jockey Andrasch Starke.

Danedream, a 3-year-old German-bred filly, gave the 37-year-old Starke his first win in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp on Oct. 2, bursting away from a strong field to win by five lengths in track-record time.

“She’s definitely the best horse I’ve ever ridden,” Starke said.

TOKYO – Danedream, the upset winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp on Oct. 2, had a seven-furlong workout on the dirt track at Tokyo Racecourse on Wednesday, her last major exercise for Sunday’s $6.7 million Japan Cup on turf.

Ridden by jockey Andrasch Starke, Danedream was timed in 1:33.20 for approximately seven furlongs. Trainer Peter Schiergen said he told Starke to ask Danedream for speed over the last three furlongs.

“She’s in the same form as she was for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, so our hopes are high,” Schiergen said.

The 4-year-old Eishin Apollon recorded the most important victory of his career Sunday at Kyoto Racecourse in Japan when he captured the Group 1 Mile Championship by a neck over Fifth Petal.

The French mare Sahpresa checked in third, another 1 1/2 lengths back, while Immortal Verse, the only other international shipper in the race, could only finish seventh in another sub-par performance.

Three-year-old French filly Immortal Verse has made her first international trip, shipping to Japan where she starts Sunday at Kyoto in the Mile Championship, worth a little less than $2.5 million.

All that travel and Immortal Verse runs into a familiar foe, Sahpresa, another French filly and the fourth-place finisher in the 2010 edition of the Mile Championship. Robert Collet trains Immortal Verse, and his son, Rod Collet, trains Sahpresa.