Victoria Mile (Group 1)

OUTSIDER Ten Happy Rose stayed on best of all to land a shock win and the biggest prize of her career in the Victoria Mile at Tokyo on Sunday.

The Group 1 mile contest is for fillies and mares and she was the second-longest odds in the 15-horse field, coming a length and a quarter clear under Akihide Tsumura, beating Christophe Lemaire’s Fierce Pride, while the favourite Masked Diva finished third by a neck. Namur, the runner-up in the Dubai Turf in March, was a disappointing eighth after a slow start.

Ten Happy Rose, a six-year-old daughter of Epiphaneia, was scoring for the sixth time on what was her 24th start, her biggest previous success having been in a listed race for owner Yasushi Tempaku, breeder Shadai Farm and trainer Daisuke Takayanagi, who sent T O Password to run fifth in the Kentucky Derby.

It was a first Group 1 triumph in a 21-year career for rider Tsumura, who said: “I knew she would be better racing on a counter clockwise course, so I trusted her and hoped she would do well around the last corner.

“It took me a while to win the Group 1. I never gave up, and I worked hard, even in the small races, so that I could ride in Group 1s every year.”

Ten Happy Rose was a fifth top-level winner for Shadai sire Epiphaneia, whose daughter Stellenbosch took last month’s Oka Sho (Japanese 1000 Guineas) and goes to post in the Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) tomorrow.