{"id":1149006,"date":"2026-08-14T23:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T23:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1149006\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T23:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T23:27:12","slug":"japan-horse-racing-finds-a-winning-formula-in-the-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1149006\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan horse racing finds a winning formula in the digital age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"ArticleTag_articleTag__P1Zo7\" href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/editor-s-picks\/tea-leaves\" data-trackable=\"primary-tag\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tea Leaves<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleHeader_newsArticleHeaderSubtitle__ZlvPp\" data-trackable=\"subhead\" data-dark-mode=\"false\">Data-driven fans fuel growth without displacing the sport&#8217;s social roots<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-main img-fluid ImageNew_imageNewImageResponsive__f1VTu\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/cms-image-bucket-productionv3-ap-northeast-1-a7d2.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com\/images\/3\/5.jpeg\" alt=\"20260812 Seina Imamura\" width=\"780\" height=\"auto\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleCaption_newsArticleCaption__fxo8v\" data-trackable=\"caption\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" style=\"display:block\">Seina Imamura\u00a0(No. 16)\u00a0wins the Japanese Oaks race at Tokyo Racecourse on May 24, becoming the first female jockey to do so. Even as technology fuels a boom in Japanese horse racing, the communal spirit of the country\u2019s racecourses endures, the author writes. \u00a9 JRA\/Kyodo<\/p>\n<p>KAORI SHOJI<\/p>\n<p>August 15, 2026 07:32 JST<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph__2p1wC\" data-dark-mode=\"false\">In this Year of the Horse, according to the Chinese lunar calendar, Japan&#8217;s long-running horse racing boom seems especially fitting. The sport has enjoyed a string of headline-grabbing moments in recent months, from legendary Japanese jockey Yutaka Take marking his 40th year in the saddle, to 22-year-old Seina Imamura becoming the first female jockey to win the prestigious Yushun Himba race (also known as the Japanese Oaks). Veteran Keita Tosaki also scored two consecutive major victories at Oi Racecourse in Tokyo&#8217;s Shinagawa district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tea Leaves Data-driven fans fuel growth without displacing the sport&#8217;s social roots Seina Imamura\u00a0(No. 16)\u00a0wins the Japanese Oaks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1149007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4107],"tags":[28021,3677,20998,85448,9348,288,2122,1071,79,16,15,18015],"class_list":["post-1149006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-age","tag-digital","tag-finds","tag-formula","tag-horse","tag-horse-racing","tag-japan","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-winning"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117096459114226968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1149007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}