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Smart Falcon

Smart Falcon is a Japanese thoroughbred racehorse. Dubbed the "Runner of the Dirt", his major wins include the 2010 and 2011 JBC Classic and Tokyo Daishoten, the 2011 Teio Sho, and the 2012 Kawasaki Kinen. His name derives from the owner's eponym ("Smart") and the bird of the same name.

Racing career
2007: two-year old season Smart Falcon debuted on October 28, 2007, at a debut race for 2 year olds held at Tokyo Racecourse with Yasunari Iwata as his jockey and was the most favored. After handily winning the race, he won his second victory at an allowance race with after coming in second in another allowance race. 2008: three-year old season Smart Falcon started the season off with his first turf race, the Junior Cup. He was the fifth favored to win, but managed to win the race and joined the Classics race. However, his bid to the Classics race proved to be unsuccessful, following his losses at the Kyodo Tsushin Hai, Arlington Cup, and ultimately finishing last at the Satsuki Shō. Following this defeat, the horse was moved from 's stable at the Miho Training Center to 's stable in Ritto Training Center; with the horse being sent out to pasture at Greenwood to recuperate in the meantime. After moving to the Kozaki stable, the horse returned to the dirt, coming in second at the Japan Dirt Derby behind , showing great potential on the dirt. Following this, he was entered in to his first race with older horses, the KBC Hai, where he won the race after being the front runner for the entire race. This would be the final JRA race for this horse. On October 7, the horse won his first graded race, the held at , where he also took the lead after the start and held on to it the entire time. This win marked the 1st graded race victory for both trainer Kozaki as well as for any progenies of Gold Allure. His next race, the JpnI Japan Breeding Farms' Cup Sprint, saw him finishing second behind . After this race, the horse had the option to enter either the Japan Cup Dirt or the , before choosing the latter. The horse won the Urawa Kinen handily in spite of the sloppy track, beating the second place horse by a 7-length lead. As a result of his performances, the horse became by far the most favored to win in the , with the parimutuel odds for the horse reaching 1.0. In that race, the horse did not start well and was placed in the rear of the pack, but ultimately won the race with a 4-length lead, marking his third graded race victory. 2009: four-year old season Smart Falcon started the 2009 season off with the held on February 11 at . He won the race as the front-runner with a 4-length lead with the odds at 1.1. He also won his next race, the , where he took the lead from an outside start and won the race with a half-length lead. He also won the held on May 4, where the horse took the lead early on and gained even further in the final stretch, beating second place by 5-lengths. On the Sakitama Hai held at May 27, the horse ran most of the race at the second or third of the pack before passing the front-runner at around the fourth corner, winning the race with a length and a half lead against Bamboo Ere. On the held on July 20, the horse was placed third in the pack before attempting to take the lead from front-runner only to be unsuccessful. The race finished with Makoto Sparviero beating Smart Falcon by four-lengths, breaking his six race winning streak. Later, at the , he ran second for most of the race before taking the lead at the final stretch and won the race at a record 02:02.2. After taking a break, he contested the Urawa Kinen on November 25. He was the front runner in that race as usual, but lost momentum at the final stretch and finished 7th, making it the first time the horse was unable to finish within the top five at a dirt race. 2010: five-year old season Smart Falcon's first race of the season was the Kakitsubata Kinen held on May 3, where the horse quickly took the lead and held on to it throughout the race, marking his 9th graded race victory. Later, at the Sakitama Hai on May 26, the horse ran third before taking the lead at the back stretch and holding on to the lead for the rest of the race, marking his 10th graded race victory. On June 30, Smart Falcon entered his first JpnI race since the JBC Sprint in 2008, the Teio Sho, where he was the third favored to win, but finished 6th behind . As Iwata had suffered an unrelated riding accident prior to this, Yutaka Take took over jockey duty for the horse's next race, the Nippon TV Hai on September 23. At the race, the horse finished third despite the winning horse, Furioso, had 2 kilograms more in weight to carry for that race. At the Japan Breeding Farms' Cup Classic held on November 3, the horse was ridden once again by Take, and the horse took the lead from the outside and held on to it without much issues, before gaining even more lead on the final stretch even as the other horses struggled, before marking his first GI victory with a 7-length lead. His next race, the Urawa Kinen, saw Smart Falcon win the race with a 6-length lead with the horse never relinquishing the lead, and Take never having to use his crop. In the final race of the year, the Tokyo Daishōten, after taking the lead from Furioso early on the horse gained more momentum at around the 4th corner, finishing the race by beating the course record by 1.7 seconds and also beating the previous Japanese record held by by 0.6 seconds. 2011: six-year old season Smart Falcon started the season off with the Diolite Kinen on May 2. In that race, the horse took the lead from the start and held on to it as the front runner for the entire race, before winning the race with an 8-length lead. With his 14th graded race victory, this race marked him becoming the horse with the most graded wins in JRA history, a title previously held by . Smart Falcon also won the Teio Sho on June 29, where he took the lead and never let the pack come close to him, crushing 2nd place Espoir City by 9 lengths. On the Nippon TV Hai in September 23, he also won the race as the front runner by taking the lead early on and finishing with a 4 length lead. In the JBC Classic on November 3, the horse took the lead early on and won the race a second time with a 1 length lead against . At the Tokyo Daishoten, the final race of the year, Smart Falcon once again took the lead and held on to it in to the final stretch, only for to strongly contest the lead; with Smart Falcon barely staving off Wonder Acute by a nose in a photo finish. 2012: seven-year old season Smart Falcon started the year off with the Kawasaki Kinen on January 25. After taking the lead with a good start, he gained the lead on the final stretch, finishing the race at 2:10.7 with a 4-length lead, and beating Vermilion's course records by 2 seconds. Following this race, Smart Falcon was invited to race in the 2012 Dubai World Cup with Transcend and Eishin Flash. Smart Falcon entered the race, but finished at 10th place. Smart Falcon skipped the year's Teio Sho as the horse wasn't recovering well enough. The horse was then sent to pasture before returning to the stable in August for a return, only for the horse to develop tenosynovitis in his hock, resulting in the horse to be retired from racing to stand stud at Shadai Stallion Station. His total of 19 graded flat race wins was the highest number of wins in Japan until broke the record in 2021. == Racing statistics ==
Racing statistics
The following racing statistics are based on information available on JBIS-Search and netkeiba. == Stud career ==
Stud career
Smart Falcon began his stud career from 2013, covering 164 mares with a service fee of 600,000JPY. The horse covered 135 and 141 mares in subsequent seasons, before his first crops debuted in 2016. That April, Siena Tokon became the first progeny to win a race after he won the Dream Challenge race in Urawa. That same year, Beach Malika became the first progeny to win a JRA race following her debut race win at Sapporo Racecourse. Smart Falcon covered a 181 mares in 2016. In April 2017, Star Lane became the first progeny to win a graded race following her win at the Saga Le Printemps Sho, and Dan Stone Lien won the Hayate Sprint in Morioka that same year. However, he couldn't produce a successful progeny for the second year season, and only covered 101 mares in 2017. On December 3, 2017, Smart Falcon was moved from the Shadai Stallion Station to the . The number of mare covered in 2018 dropped to 64. On January 24, 2021, won the Tokai Stakes, marking the first time a progeny won a JRA graded race. On May 1, 2024, won the Kashiwa Kinen (JpnI), marking the first time a progeny won a GI/JpnI race. Notable progeny c = colt, f = filly bold = grade 1 stakes ==In popular culture==
In popular culture
An anthropomorphized version of Smart Falcon appears in the Umamusume: Pretty Derby franchise, voiced by Hitomi Ōwada. The character is depicted as an idol who excels in dirt racing and wants to make it popular, referencing the racehorse's success on such tracks. Her career mode in the video game is also modeled after the real Smart Falcon's as it is exclusively on dirt save for the Satsuki Shō, where victory is not required because of her disadvantage in turf races and the actual horse's poor finish there. == Pedigree ==
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