NEXT UP

We need to wait another week for Korea Cup and Grand Prix Stakes victor Winner's Man, who is scheduled to return at Busan on Sunday 26th, but the runner-up in both Korea Cup and Grand Prix, Raon The Fighter, resumes at Seoul on Sunday afternoon.

Raon The Fighter won his first ten races, including upsetting Eoma Eoma by an emphatic six-lengths in the G3 SROA Chairman's Sprint in November 2021 over 6 f before stepping up in trip to add the G3 Busan Owners' Cup over a mile last July and then the G2 KRA Cup Classic at 1 1⁄4 m in October.

Either side of that Cup Classic triumph came narrow defeats at the hands of Winner's Man in the G1 Korea Cup and G1 Grand Prix Stakes. The big question for 2023 is whether Raon The Fighter can snare that so far elusive Group 1 win or whether Winner's Man can go on to emulate Triple Nine and secure five Group 1s having already landed the Korean Derby as a three-year-old before his two scores last year.

With connections of both having opted to skip the Dubai World Cup Carnival, they return to the regular ranks as Raon The Fighter lines up in the concluding race on Sunday at Seoul Racecourse at class 1 level over 1800M.

Naturally, Raon The Fighter  will be a prohibitive favourite over a field full of worthy if unspectacular class 1 stalwarts and with it being an allowance race, he doesn't even have to give the rest too much of a weight advantage, although the 132lbs on his back will be the most he has ever carried. He will also be partnered by a new jockey with Lim Gi-won being given the call-up for the first time.

Moon Se-young, who rode Raon The Fighter to his near misses in the Korea Cup and Grand Prix, as well as in the successful KRA Cup Classic, is aboard his most credible challenger this time around. SOUL MERIT was a class and distance winner in November before running 2nd when facing a whole host of today's rivals on January 8th. That day's winner HEUNGROK DAEBU is another likely to receive some backing on a place line but will need to find a significant amount more to trouble Raon The Fighter.

The race is the concluding event on an 11-race program at Seoul on Sunday. Elsewhere on the card, the unbeaten Shine On Me  looks set to continue on his merry way in the class 4 race 7, while another Moon Se-young partnered runner, THUNDER HORSE looks very much the pick in the class 5 race 10.

At Busan there is a 6-race Sunday program with the hottest favourite on the card likely to be the Thomas Gillespie-trained Carpe Babel , who seeks her maiden win after back-to-back runner-up finishes in the class 4 race 3.