3 minute read

We couldn't take the Flying Horsebox today so we joined a visit arranged for the visiting media by the JRA and JAIRS.

It was about a two hour drive from Tokyo passing close by Narita Airport and a giant Buddha en route.  Turns out this was the tallest Buddha statue in Japan. It was created in 1995 and is 130 feet high.

Miho itself is huge – has an area of 2,234,000m2.  It's one of the two training centres in Japan with the other – Ritto - being near Osaka.  The building of the training centres was brought about by the increase in numbers of horses in training and the inability to extend the stable areas of the tracks themselves due to property development limiting room for expansion.Miho has room for 2,300 horses, plus their trainers, stable stuff, jockeys, track workers etc and their families so there's about 5000 people living there.  They do all right too with supermarkets, restaurants and sports facilities on site.

The horses do OK too – there's all sorts of tracks – turf, dirt and polytrack in the two main areas and then there is the Uphill Training Track which is 1,200m and has all mod cons with a nifty device attached to the saddle cloth so that people in the building can see all the times run at every 100m. Then there's the swimming pool where the water is a pleasant 24.25 and there's a water treadmill which is like a Jacuzzi and even hot fans which are like equine versions of hair dryers for après swimming.If you get injured there's a beaut veterinary hospital which has all sorts of fantastic machines there. There's a standing MRI machine where the horse just walks in and doesn't have to be anaesthetized and it's not as noisy as the one used on humans. And there is an incredible machine called an "O-Arm" which is extremely expensive but brilliant in trying to resolve injuries particularly those in tricky areas like fetlocks.

As we said there is room for 2,304 horses in 125 stables. There are 100 licensed trainers at each centre where horses work every day except Monday. Track work mostly takes place between 7am and 11am six days each week with Monday being a day off although horses may be on a walking machine or go for a swim or go for a walk in the little forest where the track is made really nice for horses' feet by having a 10cm covering of cedar bark.Horses go by special vans to the race tracks when they are due to run and they come home to their stables after.  On our way home we stopped at a very nice hotel where they provided us with a very superior form of nose bags – these are called "Bentos" here in Japan and this one came in a beautiful wooden box with all sorts of delicious things.  No carrots though. 

Top marks to the JRA and JAIRS for such an excellent day – the weather was great too!