Scorpio Cup is just about to end, and with that comes the new cycle of preparation for the next Champions Meeting and second one of the year, the Sagitarius Cup. Those of you who have been playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby for a while now may note that the Sagittarius Cup has a seemingly familiar location, distance, and length… which for those who are unaware, is the same as the vaulted Arima Kinen race. All of the Champions Meeting races utilize famous races for their baseline stats, but none of those races is quite as famous as the Arima Kinen, or as notorious!

Before we get into the race and prep, a few quick reminders for those of you who are newer to this segment: Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a management/training simulator in which you, the player, train numerous Umamusume to race against one another, and Champions Meetings are the PVP equivalent of that, bringing teams of three to face off against one another for supremacy on the turf (or dirt, but that one is coming up later). If you’re a new player, we have guides about how to understand Career Mode and the current Unity Cup Scenario, as well as how PVP works, Inheritances, Support Cards, and much more.

The Sagittarius Cup: The Fan Favorite

The Sagittarius Cup is a Long distance race (2500m) on Nakayama Racecourse run from the Right Inner Posts in Winter with Sunny Weather and Firm Conditions. As we’ve established in previous articles, these details are important to note for Green skills, but also for the type of race you can expect. Players who have faced the Arima Kinen in numerous careers are certainly familiar with the race itself, but planning to play it at the highest competition against other players is a slightly different beast, meaning that the right green skills can make all the difference when it comes to the Sagittarius and obtaining victory.

Something you may notice is that the race is 2500m, meaning that it is a fairly “short” Long Distance race, but also a non-Standard Distance one too, as 2500 is not a multiple of 400. This means that some of the usual Long Distance race training tips from previous Champions Meetings such as Libra or Gemini will still apply, but the odd distance creates a few new opportunities for trainees to succeed and some of the older wisdom of extremely high Stamina being just slightly less important than before (You’re still going to need a lot of it). It is also worth noting that the Sagittarius Cup has an extremely long Straight right before the end of the race, meaning that certain skills, like Angling and Scheming, are less important than those like Straightaway Spurt or other similar skills, and it it may be worth revisiting your trainees and decks before working on your team to see what you want to focus on.

The Real Arima Kinen: The World’s Most Monied Race

Yutaka Take's victorious pose as Oguri Cap won the 1990 Arima Kinen. (Credit: Sankei, GettyImages)

I did want to take the opportunity of the Sagittarius Cup to talk a bit about the real life race that is the Arima Kinen, which recently had its latest running at the end of 2025. The Arima Kinen is the most monied race in the entire world, not just Japan, meaning that it is perhaps the pinnacle of horse racing in the world. No horse can just run it, either, as the Arima Kinen is primarily made up of fan favorites; 10 of the 16 runners are determined by fan votes, meaning that to even be in the Arima Kinen, you have to have won over the fans more than you have to perform well or have a lot of money to buy entrance (obviously, though, winning a lot helps!). The Arima Kinen used to exclude foreign trained horses until 1999, and has lately allowed a wider variety of foreign competitors, even if the race is generally dominated by Japanese trained horses and jockeys.

The Arima Kinen is important to horse racing and Umamusume, and as players have likely noticed, the race comes up extremely often in various careers; this is generally due to the fact that some of the most famous and influential horses in Japanese racing are Arima Kinen winners and competitors, with only a select few having won the race more than once (which is a testament to a long and successful career). Perhaps the most famous of these double victors is Oguri Cap, the horse who sparked a racing renaissance in Japan, but he’s joined by Speed Symboli, Symboli Rudolf, Grass Wonder, Symboli Kris S, and Orfevre in the extremely small circle of double winners.

Even those who won once comprise a startlingly huge number of the Umamusume cast across generations, including racers such as Daiwa Scarlet, Mayano Top Gun, Mejiro Palmer, Narita Brian, T.M. Opera O, Manhattan Cafe, Dream Journey, Gold Ship, Gentildonna, Satono Diamond, Kitasan Black, and newer generation horses like Chrono Genesis, Equinox, and Do Deuce. Zenno Rob Roy, who has yet to debut as a trainee in the game for Global, is still the all-time record holder in the race, completing it in 2:29.5! The horses who have competed but not run in the race reads like an almost exhaustive list of trainees available in the game.

Oguri’s monumental victories were also part of his “Cinderella Story” career, with the first win being the one in which he surpassed Tamamo Cross, and the final one being his actual final race, marking the end of a career that had changed the course of horse racing forever. The Arima Kinen is a huge deal, to put it shortly. If you’re curious to see the race itself, the JRA uploads broadcasts of it, and 2025’s race can be viewed here with English commentary:

The Back of the Pack Once Again

Because the Sagittarius is a Long distance race, those of you familiar with Champions Meetings may know what’s coming: the most crowded group of competitive racers are End Closers once again, although there are a few other competitive places in the race to consider. But the Stamina toll of a Long race means that you’ll want to consider at least one End Closer in your team of three, and potentially more than one, as well as expecting that Style to be the one that contains the most varied types of competitors (Both Aces and Debuffers).

Gold Ship Stats

Gold Ship remains an incredibly strong pick, but top tier performance requires her to be at Potential 5.

As a Long Distance Race, Stamina and Recovery are going to be particularly important to remember when it comes to building your trainees and their skills. Having at least 1000+ Stamina and a Gold Recovery Skill is the bare minimum to be competitive, but if possible, having an extra Recovery skill can go a long way to helping ensure your trainee shrugs off any debuffs. You’ll still want to get max Speed, 1200, and quite a lot of Power to be competitive in the final portion of the race, as well as the now standard 400 Guts. In some cases, if you end up with 500+ Guts, you can consider a little off the top of your Stamina, but that’s not exactly a goal to shoot for. Wit is perhaps the newest wrinkle that many have noticed has climbed quite a bit from previous Champions Meetings as the game has also changed; although 400 is the bare minimum that would often ensure most skills activate, competitive trainees are going to want 600 Wit. These numbers don’t change that much regardless of what Style you’re running, but do remember that Front Runners and Pace Chasers do often need more Stamina than other positions due to the toll of being in front or chasing the front of the race.

Selecting Your Trainees

Although many of the trainees in Umamusume have competed in the Arima Kinen in real life, if we’re looking in terms of the game and who can be most competitive, there are some very particular standouts when it comes to who, or what, you could train. One thing to consider is that Gold Ship remains one of the best competitors still and is free to all players, so at the very least you always have access to one exceptionally strong trainee. With that in mind, here’s a list of who you may want to consider based on who you have access to:

Starters Only: Daiwa Scarlet (Front), Gold Ship (End)

Some Pulls: Mayano Top Gun (End), Mejiro Ryan (Late)3 Stars: Summer Maruzensky, Seiun Sky, Mejiro McQueen, Full Armor Matikanefukukitaru, Summer Special Week, Narita Taishin, Manhattan Cafe, Symboli Rudolf, Narita Brian (End), Tamamo Cross

New to this race are Christmas Oguri and Christmas Biwa Hayahide, two trainees whose banners will be going live on January 5th. I’ve spoken in the past about Christmas Oguri due to her power in Champions Meetings and the upcoming Make A New Track (MANT) scenario, but both of the trainees from this banner are very strong competitors for the Sagittarius Cup, if you are considering pulling for either of them and manage to obtain one of them.

Of the two, Oguri is the better choice, but if you do happen to obtain either one, know that they can be built to be very strong trainees with Xmas Biwa at Pace and Xmas Oguri at either Late or End Closer. Why they are both so good has to do with their Uniques and Innate skills, with Xmas Oguri in particular coming with multiple Recovery skills in her own kit (Particularly, Gourmand for Pace, which you aren’t going to run her at here), and a Unique that gives her speed if she’s recovered 3 times during the race. You will likely want to get Oguri to have multiple White recovery skills over stacking Golds, because you need to ensure they activate and Gold skills are extremely expensive.

Biwa’s kit debuts the Long Distance specific VIP Pass recovery skill, as well as a Unique that requires her to be “well positioned” for the race (essentially, she can’t fall out of where she should be to midpoint in the race). Ironically, Biwa does want to run at Pace, so make sure you consider getting her Gourmand from somewhere to compliment VIP Pass if you don’t want to give her Swinging Maestro.

A Reminder to Avoid Burnout

As we begin 2026 with two Champions Meetings already and very likely to continue with two per month as Global continues the accelerated schedule, I wanted to take a moment to talk about avoiding burnout as much as possible with the game. Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a management game at heart, meaning that your end goal should be having fun creating the best or greatest version of your trainee possible, and that can be difficult when you are always feeling pressured to compete. Champions Meetings are fun, sure, but they aren’t the only reason to play the game and also shouldn’t be the main reason you do play it, or you’ll likely find the game no longer being fun.

There are a few Quality of Life things to hope for soon, one of which is the automatic career function. I’ve certainly been waiting to see it coming, which can make running events or training parents far, far easier and less time consuming; one of the hardest things to juggle in Umamusume is training for a Champions Meeting AND completing the hundreds of thousands of event points when events run, as doing one is often not that easy to do at the same time as the other.

But, again, remember that the fun of the game is training trainees, experiencing their stories, building teams, and having fun with a Club. If you’re looking for a Club, we do run one that you can join if you are a member of the Goonhammer Discord, if you haven’t already! Don’t fret too much about how well or poorly you do in Champions Meetings either, because they do rerun, and there’s always new ways to compete in them and new ways to excel as time goes on; we’ll even be soon seeing some of that as we reach the midpoint of 2026 and start encountering races like Libra Cup with an entirely new meta… Until then, if you have any questions, please leave us comments down below, drop by the Goonhammer Discord if you’re a Patron, or even email me at marcy@goonhammer.com! Until then, see you out on the track!

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Tags: umamusume | Uma Musume Pretty Derby