Silence Suzuka's appearance was far simpler than most. After throwing off her jacket in one smooth motion, she'd already picked it back up and started walking off. No extra stops, no additional movements, no acknowledgment of the cameras.
"Eh, how unique! Her winning outfit is cyan-green!
"This color suits her remarkably well."
"Yeah, very cool, but also kind of cute at the same time!"
The presentation stage existed as a place for newly appearing uma musume to fully display themselves to the crowd, but Silence Suzuka still had no plans whatsoever to do things like actively greeting the audience or playing to the cameras.
Some uma musume, desperate to attract attention, would blow kisses or wink flirtatiously at the stands.
She found those gestures unnecessary and honestly kind of embarrassing. Appearing briefly and leaving coolly was the entrance method she'd decided worked best for her. It wouldn't make her nervous, and it felt authentic.
"Suzuka! It's Suzuka! Trainer, it's Suzuka-san!" Urara's voice rang out as she waved one hand excitedly.
This was her very first time watching a race of this magnitude. Her mood was absolutely electric with excitement.
King Halo and Grass Wonder also shouted encouragement several times, voices joining the general roar.
"Hey, Trainer, this race, Suzuka will definitely win it, right?" King Halo suddenly spun around to ask, seeking confirmation.
Hayato returned her look with a simple smile. "Yeah, she'll win."
The track conditions had become somewhat terrible after yesterday's rain, but even that couldn't affect Silence Suzuka's great escape strategy. The probability of victory remained extremely high.
After hearing Hayato's confident answer, King Halo turned back around to keep cheering.
Several fans who'd originally supported Air Groove were now directing their encouragement toward Suzuka as well. "Silence Suzuka, win Air Groove's portion too!"
"Go for it, Suzuka!" In a certain secluded corner of the venue, Air Groove herself had also managed to come watch. Her fever had already broken and subsided. Having rushed here in a hurry without time to buy a proper ticket, she could only observe the race from this hidden spot.
There was also one particularly special spectator present, Daiwa Scarlet was watching this race as well, eyes tracking every movement intently. She wanted to closely observe the great escape technique everyone had been talking about recently, hoping to catch some insight from seeing it live.
After finishing the stage presentation, Silence Suzuka walked toward the actual race grounds.
The uma musume who'd arrived earlier all looked at her with unusual gazes, something different flickering in their expressions as she passed.
Being the top favorite and center of attention was normal enough. Several who'd already lost races to Silence Suzuka felt almost suffocated just thinking about facing her great escape strategy again.
That kind of speed was genuinely beyond their reach. All they could do was sigh quietly behind her back.
Leading from wire to wire with the great escape all the way to the finish, not only maintaining that blistering pace without slowing down, but somehow able to accelerate even harder in the late stages? Who else could possibly do that?
Biwa Heidi walked directly toward Silence Suzuka, her gaze locking onto her target as a provocative smile spread across her face. "Did Air Groove pass her will on to you? Then I'll defeat both Air Groove's portion and yours together. Listen carefully, the final winner of this race is going to be me!"
"No. I won't lose this race." Silence Suzuka's response came back with quiet steel. "I'll win it together with Air Groove-senpai's portion."
"Hehe, is that right? Then you'd better be very careful out there." Biwa Heidi's smile turned smug. "I haven't been sitting idle this past month. I've already cracked the secret behind your great escape method!"
While investigating Silence Suzuka's information and race history, she'd learned that Suzuka was fundamentally an uma musume who could only run from the front.
So wouldn't it be simple? Just don't give Silence Suzuka the chance to take the lead in the first place.
Conveniently enough, she was also a front-runner herself. As long as she possessed sufficiently high stamina, she could dare to compete directly with Suzuka's pace. That's why she'd spent this entire month focused on raising her stamina stat.
The training method she'd thought up was simply running long distances repeatedly. Because the approach was fundamentally flawed, the actual improvement effect had been minimal, she'd only managed to raise her stamina by roughly fifty points.
What she didn't know was that her stamina total still fell short of catching up to Air Groove's level. And because the mile distance was relatively short, having excessively high stamina would actually waste too much energy. It wasn't necessarily advantageous at all.
If Air Groove were competing today, Biwa Heidi would still be carefully considering whether to target her specifically. But with Air Groove absent, she no longer needed to hesitate at all. She believed that simply stopping Silence Suzuka's great escape would be more than enough to secure victory.
"Then I'll say the same thing one more time. I'm going to win this race." At a loss for additional words, Silence Suzuka dropped that final line and stopped paying attention to Biwa Heidi entirely.
Before the race, Hayato had told her she could win this easily. Right now, she genuinely felt zero pressure about the outcome.
She trusted Hayato's words deeply and completely. In all the time they'd worked together, she'd never once seen her trainer misjudge a situation or give her bad advice.
"At long last, the wait is over! One by one, the Uma Musume step forward, each entering the starting gates as the tension in the air reaches its breaking point! Who's gonna take the Sakura crown this year?!"
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According to history, Air Groove can't participate in this race. I didn't expect that Air Groove wouldn't join Oka Sho. There's a black horse here. A newbie who immediately joined a G1 race without going through G2 or G3 or an Op race, but won a G1 in her/his record, and in the next G1 race triple tiara in history was less than -0.2 seconds behind Air Groove, almost achieving a double crown in triple tiara.