Covid even stopped the Olympics - so how has Japanese racing been so unaffected?

When the sun rose over Japan’s eastern shore on January 1, 2020, it was supposed to be the dawn of a year when the eyes of the sporting world would be drawn there for a glorious celebration of sport, the like of which had not been seen in the country since 1964. Instead, it was the year Tokyo 2020 didn’t happen.

As SARS-Cov-2 spread Covid-19 around the globe, nations and states went into degrees of mask-wearing emergency mode. In Japan, the Olympics was shelved, the J-League football season was put on hold for four months and the top baseball league started three months late.

But horseracing continued with barely a stumble: Contrail won the Triple Crown, Gran Alegria dazzled, and the great Almond Eye bowed out in glory; all 288 scheduled racedays went ahead, with 3,456 races, four more than in 2019.