Yutaka Take became the oldest G1-winning jockey in Japan Racing Association history on Sunday when Sixpence delivered a narrow but decisive verdict in the Yasuda Kinen at Tokyo, ending a drought that had stretched across multiple campaigns and two training regimes.

The four-year-old son of Kizuna had been a horse of considerable promise unfulfilled at the highest level. He had won on debut as a two-year-old under former trainer Sakae Kunieda and subsequently extended his winning sequence to three with victory in the Spring Stakes (G2, 1,800m). But the anticipated G1 breakthrough never materialised — a ninth-place finish in the Tokyo Yushun (Japanese Derby, G1, 2,400m) proved a turning point, and while he added two more graded successes with the Mainichi Okan (G2, 1,800m) and the Nakayama Kinen (G2, 1,800m) at the start of his four-year-old campaign, he remained winless across several subsequent starts, including three outings on dirt in which he could manage no better than second. Following Kunieda's retirement and the handover of the stable to Hiroyasu Tanaka, Sixpence returned to turf but finished seventh in the Milers Cup (G2, 1,600m), offering little indication of what was to come.

Take, called in at short notice to partner Sixpence for the first time, did not ride blind. "I contacted his previous riders and of course the trainer," he explained, noting that Tanaka had given him a clear profile of the horse — one capable of sustaining speed through to the wire. That intelligence shaped a precise tactical plan, and Take executed it with the assurance of a rider who has won 85 JRA-G1 races.

Using an inside barrier to advantage, Take slotted Sixpence forward along the rails as World's End, a son of Lord Kanaloa, dictated at a moderate pace and opened a gap of around four lengths heading down the backstretch. As the field compressed rounding the final turn, Take moved quickly to the inside lane before making a decisive shift to the outside of the leader ahead of the uphill stretch. What followed was a four-way battle of neck-and-neck intensity in the final 50 metres, with Seiun Hades pressing from the outside and Gaia Force arriving late and fast from mid-division. Sixpence held them all, winning by a narrow margin.

World's End ran a performance that deserved better fortune. Despite setting a moderate tempo and being exposed along the entire straight, the front-runner refused to capitulate, rallying gamely through the uphill stretch and finishing in a dead-heat for second with Gaia Force — who had produced the fastest closing sectional from the 400-metre mark but simply ran out of ground. Both were beaten a neck.

The numbers around the winning connections deserve proper accounting. Take's Yasuda Kinen record now reads four: Oguri Cap in 1990, Heart Lake in 1995, Vodka in 2009, and now Sixpence in 2025. At 57 years, two months and 24 days, he is the oldest jockey to win a JRA-G1 race. For trainer Tanaka, it was a fourth JRA-G1 title and his first since Lemon Pop's 2024 Champions Cup victory.

Take, characteristically measured in victory, framed the result less as personal achievement and more as professional execution. "Sixpence was very responsive," he said, adding that despite the late charge of horses around him in the final stretch, the colt showed genuine strength under pressure — strength that, in his reading, points to more to come.

The Yasuda Kinen has a way of confirming what a horse truly is. For Sixpence, the answer arrived late but emphatically.