This is the closing section from the Nov. 26, 2023, edition of the Japan Sports Notebook.
Closing Commentary
In Remembrance of a Loyal Reader
This installment of the Japan Sports Notebook is dedicated to the memory of avid reader Diana Barfknecht, who recently passed away in Minnesota at age 81.
A retired nurse, Diana was a positive, kind person and one of my mother’s close friends.
Readers provide inspiration and motivation to pursue stories. Week after week, they challenge us to deliver interesting story angles and commentary and often encourage us with feedback about certain articles.
For years, Diana would send frequent emails from the United States, asking about a particular aspect of Japanese culture ― and often about sports, especially horse racing.
In responding to Diana’s many inquiries, I learned plenty, too, researching a bit more on a particular subject or trying to explain in greater detail about something I had seen or read about.
A Fondness for Gray Horses
In recent years, the emails often would be about horse racing, a sport that I’ve covered more frequently in the 2020s than in the 2010s. And Diana loved horse racing. She and her late husband, Dale, attended countless horse races together in Minnesota, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. And she liked to remind me about it.
“Dale and I went every Saturday, and if we went on vacation, we’d find them close by,” she once wrote.
Diana had a particular fondness for gray horses. In recent years, she mentioned one of her favorite racing stories on multiple occasions, telling it in a variety of ways and citing a few different racetracks.
“I’d always bet on the gray horse. Needless to say, I did not do so well,” she wrote in another email, adding a smiley emoticon.
Kurofune progeny Sodashi was one of Diana’s favorite horses and she was delighted to receive YouTube videos of her races.
The beautiful, white Japanese filly, who officially retired in October 2023, brought joy to Diana and untold others during her successful career.
RIP, Diana.
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Ed Odeven Reporting 