The Asian Mile Challenge is a series of four one-mile (eight furlongs) Thoroughbred horse races. Created in 2005, the series was launched with two races, one in Hong Kong, the other in Japan. In 2006, the Melbourne Racing Club of Australia and the Dubai Racing Club of the United Arab Emirates joined the series.
Raced approxinmately four weeks apart between March and June, a US$1 million bonus is given to any horse who wins two legs of the Asian Mile Challenge. In 2006, the Hong Kong-based horse Bullish Luck collected the bonus after winning the Champions Mile and the Yasuda Kinen.
The Asian Mile Challenge now consists of four Grade I races:
- Futurity Stakes at Caulfield Racecourse, Melbourne
- Dubai Duty Free Stakes at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai
- Champions Mile at Sha Tin Racecourse, Hong Kong
- Yasuda Kinen at Tokyo Racecourse, Tokyo
Famous quotes containing the words asian, mile and/or challenge:
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)
“For now the moon with friendless light carouses
On hill and housetop, street and marketplace,
Men will plunge, mile after mile of men,
To crush this lucent madness of the face....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)