Japan lifts ban on top racehorses Champion Hong Kong racehorse Fairy King Prawn and four other foreign thoroughbreds will be allowed to run the Yasuda Kinen race next month after Japan lifted a ban today.Fairy King Prawn, last year`s winner, had been barred from the June 3 race after competing at a meeting in the United Arab Emirates, which has had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.But the Japan Racing Association (JRA) said it would allow the five foreign racehorses to the Yasuda Kinen race as long as they were disinfected before leaving for Japan and were certified as having not entered disease-affected areas.'With the decision, two horses from Hong Kong and three others from the United Arab Emirates can run the Yasuda Kinen race on June 3,' said a JRA spokesman. One thoroughbred from the United States and one from Australia have also applied to run the $1.5 million Yasuda Kinen in Tokyo, Japan`s biggest mile race on turf. The ban did not apply to either country.The JRA withdrew an invitation for Fairy King Prawn to the race after it was told by the Agriculture Ministry in March to bar entry to all horses which had been in Britain, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates in a bid to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth.Fairy King Prawn competed in Dubai on March 24, the day after the Japanese government`s instruction. Race organisers in Dubai imposed strict measures to protect horses and said the racecourse was far from any outbreak of the disease.
