I’m something of a person who enjoys extremes, and so in Umamusume: Pretty Derby, my two favorite trainees to raise are Sprinters and Long Distance runners. I find both of them interesting in different ways, and they require somewhat different approaches; in fact, all distances really do have unique strategies and considerations, but the two poles of the game are the shortest and longest distances. It doesn’t hurt that for me, many of my favorite trainees also tend to favor these types of races, so this week’s guide is the first in a series of four guides that will take a look at how to raise successful trainees for each distance, explain what makes those distances unique, considerations you’ll need to start trying to memorize for optimal training runs, and finally discussions of Support Decks (with some example options) and Inheritances.
If you’ve recently started playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby, this guide will be a little more in depth than some of our other guides, and assumes you have a pretty standard knowledge of the game at this point. I urge you to go check out our Career, Support Deck, Inheritance, PVP, and Potential/Star Level guides, as well as our handy general guide to direct any Umamusume related questions you might have as you play. Otherwise, whether you’re a seasoned two month veteran of the Umamusume: Pretty Derby launch or a relative newcomer, let us discover the joys of Sprint racing and how you, too, can Bakushin to a brighter tomorrow.
Sprint Distance and You
Sprints are the shortest races in Umamusume, and that shortness makes them wholly unique in ways that they work compared to other races. Some Sprints are so brief that they have a single curve, where longer races will run the entire oval of a racecourse (sometimes even with an extra half or full lap). This means that Sprints can be over before you know it, and that means that your racers can also perform a lot worse than you might expect them to seemingly out of nowhere. For one, many skills in Umamusume that you often hear about activate on corners an curves, meaning that races without them can be trickier to use. There also, ironically, isn’t very much straightaway either. Skills that seem like surefire bets in other lengths may have particularly little value in Sprints, including the much vaulted Swinging Maestro (but more on that later). A 1400m race, such as Tokyo Racecourse, will have exactly two corners, one curve, and a straight; compared to the 2400m race at the same location, which has four corners, two curves, and two straights. While that is pretty simple to understand, the short length of Sprint races can present unique problems that do not always allow for mistakes that can be recovered from; even a Late Start could end your race.
The two most important stats for Sprint are Speed and Power. While guides will often talk about Speed and Stamina, Power is slightly misunderstood due to what it actually does. Power affects your trainee’s acceleration, meaning that the top Speed your racer can reach is directly impacted by how much Power they have to fuel that surge. This matters less in longer races, to the point that training Power in Long Distance races is almost an afterthought, because the longer the race, the more time your racer has to reach their top speed. But in a Sprint, that isn’t the case, and if you’ve ever wondered why your 1200 Speed Sakura Bakushin O is losing to a 1000 Speed 1000 Power King Halo, the answer is that it doesn’t matter how fast you are if you aren’t able to reach that speed in time. Raising a high Speed, High Power Sprinter is actually harder than it may seem, because while Speed trains Power, it doesn’t always train it particularly well, and thus some level of investment needs to be made. And, well, you still need Wit and Stamina, so how do we get to the targets we want? Inheritances and Support Decks.
Inheriting for Sprints
As discussed in our Inheritance Sparks guide, Inheritances impact your trainee by giving them three distinct instances where their stats, skill hints, and aptitudes can be impacted by the parents and grandparents that were selected before the beginning of a race. While it may seem counterintuitive at first, Sprinters want to inherit Stamina, NOT Speed or Power. And you want to inherit a LOT of Stamina, meaning you want to find a 9 Star Stamina friend, and if possible, 9 Star Power from your own stable. If you had to choose between Stamina or Power for the 9 Star, you need to select Stamina. The reason we want to inherit Stamina is so that we can ignore the stat during training, perhaps except for Summer training if we’re afraid we won’t hit the goals we need. Sprinters need just a bit over 500 Stamina depending on positioning, and anything over 600 is too much.
Our goal for a Sprinter is 1200 Speed (or as close as possible, so something in the realm of 1100+ is a success), at least 1000 Power, 550~580 Stamina, and as much Wit as possible, ideally at least 400 if not higher, like 500 or even 600. By inheriting Stamina from high Stamina parents, we can ensure that each Inspiration event should be giving us huge boosts to our Stamina, possibly as much as 60 to 100 Stamina or more each time, and letting training events and other things help get us over the finish line. As mentioned, Speed training also trains Power, but importantly Power training also trains Stamina, which can help get us to our Stamina goals as well.
Although looking for Stamina inherits is our most important goal for parents and legacies, we also want to look for a few different Aptitude boosts. Sprints are entirely on Turf, and boosting Turf from A to S is always a welcome benefit if possible from Inheritances. More important is trying to find Sprint inherits, which can really boost the A to S, and in other cases, help racers who aren’t Sprinters become Sprinters. These inherits aren’t as easy to obtain alongside the amount of Stamina we’ll want, but they’re worth looking for.
Other things to keep an eye out for from inheritances are Skill inherits, particularly Unique skills. A few very good ones for Sprinters are those from most of the Sprinter roster, such as Genius x Bakushin = Victory, or Shooting for Victory!, as well as any skills that match our runner’s preference for position. White Sparks are random in what skills we might learn, but they’re always worth looking for. Always keep in mind that if you are not familiar with a racer’s unique skill that you read it before selecting them for inheritance; for example, Agnes Tachyon is often suggested as a very good parent, but her Unique Skill U=ma2 doesn’t have quite as much value if we carefully read it: “Recover endurance when conserving energy on a corner in the second half of the race.” Remember, Sprints only have two Corners, meaning this skill really only has one chance to activate unlike longer races with multiple late half corners.
Support Deck Basics
In our Support Deck Guide, we touched on some of the basics of deck building, but as your card catalogue expands and you gain access to more cards, there are far more options that are available to you. But, for a basic deck, a very solid Sprinter deck is four Speed and two Power cards. This often provides enough chances for good Rainbow trainings to occur in the dominant stat, while also providing good bonuses to the Secondary stat we want to train in the event that we don’t have anything good available to train on that day in Speed. Taking advantage of this style of deck, hitting our goals for Speed and Power will mostly be reliant on managing energy effectively and not taking protracted risks, as well as potentially using Summer to train Power over Speed (unless the choice is exceptionally high returns in Speed). This is because Summer training is equivalent to LVL 5 training in a stat, and our Speed stat should always be the highest level training we have available and focus on building primarily.
Card choice is also important. The ubiquitous Kitasan Black is going to always be valuable in just about any deck as a primary Speed card, and in a deck with four Speed cards, we certainly want to include it if possible. Kitasan Black brings a lot of valuable tools to our training kit, including Mood alternating events, energy recovery, and also a bonus to Power training at high enough levels. If you have access to them, some other great SSRs for Sprinters are Biko Pegasus and Special Week “The Setting Sun and Rising Stars” from the launch event. These would certainly be “luxury” picks due to the fact that SSR cards, especially those with multiple Limit Breaks or MLB, is going to be far less common than maxed SR or R cards.
SR cards offer a lot of great choices for Speed training, including some with very good skills. King Halo’s SR card is great (unless you are training her, obviously), but a particular star card is Eishin Flash’s SR card, “5:00 am – Right on Schedule”). Although the skills may not be universally useful for most racers, Eishin Flash has numerous card events that recover Energy and even extend the Energy bar, meaning that her card can help prolong the need to take a Rest, as well as providing more overall energy to train with. If you’re training a Late Surger, even better, but Eishin Flash can be a great option for your Speed cards even if you aren’t due to the energy gains.
As for Power Cards, Hishi Amazon’s SR, Vodka’s SSR, and Mihono Bourbon’s SRs are all good choices if available. These cards provide generally beneficial skills (some of which are positional), but also have helpful events and good training stats and benefits. At the end of the day, you want a deck with four Speed and two Power of your best available cards; as a final beginner note, more Unlock levels are better than fewer, meaning an MLB Eishin Flash SR will be better than a 0LB SSR speed card; keep in mind what you have, and what you can use, when building your deck. SSRs aren’t always better just because they are SSR!
More Advanced Support Decks
If you have collected a fairly sizeable Support Card library and have multiple high LB or even MLB cards, there are other decks that are available to you. One of the biggest mistakes players make when following guides is not understanding why basic decks stack so heavily into a single stat, such as the above mentioned 4 SPD 2 PWR deck. This is also why early on, players saw great success with 5SPD 1X (or even meme 6SPD) decks and Sakura Bakushin O, clearing the URA campaign easily but then having her flop out of team races. One of the aspects of Support Cards is “Speciality Priority”, a percentage chance for that Card to show up in the stat they are aligned with. The higher the percentage, the more often the card appears in the “right” place, allowing for the most training benefits but also the coveted Rainbow trainings. When stacking decks with multiple cards of the same type, this often combats the problem that low level cards have poor Priority percentage.
With more available and higher level cards, an advanced Sprint deck will still heavily want to favor Speed, but can replace a Power Card for a Stamina card (and by that I mean Super Creek) or a Wit card. There’s very little to be gained for going down to three Speed, but if you wanted to experiment, a 3 SPD, 2 PWR, 1 WIT or Friend Card (Such as Tazuna) is an option worth trying if you’d like to experiment. Having more variety in our deck means that we will potentially see more variance in what events are available and what training bonuses we can get from Friends, but it gives us more depth in our skill options, and can also help improve our general training flow. Wit and Friend cards are great for helping manage Energy levels, often restoring energy through training events, but also Wit training restores Energy, meaning that taking Wit training even a few times can provide more benefits than hitting Rest. Resting is the least efficient thing you can do in Umamusume, and so the less you need to do it, the better.
Advanced Decks are great practice for later scenarios, which will generally ask for far greater variety in a Support Deck, but if you try them and find the results underwhelming, it very may well be that your cards are not high enough with LB levels; again, the higher their LB levels, the better their bonuses, and many cards have 50% of higher Priority when they are close to MLB. Still, consider giving them a try; these are great ways to manage getting higher and better performing trainees, and Wit card usage especially can make a big change to your training regimen.
Skills to Watch Out for in Sprint Distance
Since Sprints are so short, some of the skills you’ll want to look for differ slightly from others. First, let’s talk about healing skills: Swinging Maestro is still a great healing skill if you can fit Super Creek into your deck, but Hydrate/Gourmand from Special Week’s Event SSR is a fantastic choice if you are raising a Pace Chaser Sprinter like Taiki Shuttle or Curren Chan, reducing your need to take a Stamina card just for a single skill. Inheriting U=ma2 from Agnes Tachyon is a possibility for healing also, but it has a very specific window to activate, which may not be beneficial or reliable in Sprints.
What may not come as a surprise based on discussion of this distance so far is that speed related skills (Velocity and Acceleration) are what you’re mostly looking for. Distance specific skills like Sprint Corners or Sprint Straightaways can be good, as are Homestretch Haste. Similarly, skills for your trainee’s preferred style are great, like Pace Chaser Savvy.
The Skill set Sprinting Gear and Turbo Sprint are unique to Sprinters and absolutely worth grabbing if you can get access to them. Sakura Bakushin O can get these innately, and support cards can also pass them on. These are flat acceleration boosts, which help your Power, and can be great to shore up your trainee in a fight for the finish. The most unique skills for Sprint is Huge Lead and Staggering Lead. This set of skills relies on your racer being a Front Runner, and specifically on them having a fair bit of distance ahead of the other racers; if you aren’t running a Front Runner, these skills are situational (as they can still trigger if they pull ahead by a large margin on the final curve), but generally you should only pursue these two on Front Runners that you plan to make go to the front and stay there.
Some other staple skills in other distances aren’t as important as others. Professor of Curvature from Kitasan Black, for example, can sometimes be useful in Sprints, but the single curve and corner set in the race means that it can also just not activate. Green stats like Firm Conditions, Sunny Days, or others that are based on track condition are also potentially lucrative, as long as you remember that Team matches have randomized conditions. Still, when training for something like Challenge Meets, condition based skills can be good to pick up for the flat offerings.
Debuff builds in Sprint should focus on skills that reduce Speed, such as the Hesitant skills. Stamina Debuffs aren’t quite as important, since the race doesn’t rely on maintaining Stamina, meaning while they might activate, they may not have much impact.
Oh God She’s Going for the Jukebox: Sakura Bakushin O
Everyone’s favorite Student Council Representative and In One Ear Out the Other, Sakura Bakushin O, is one of the best Sprinters available in the game. While some other later SSR Umas can outshine her, Sakura Bakushin O has an important benefit: She’s free. Aside from that, Bakushin has another factor, which is her stat preferences. Baksuhin has a whopping 20% Speed Growth and 10% in Wit, meaning that her Speed training is going to be consistently easier and better than other Trainees; Taiki Shuttle has the same spread, meaning Bakushin has the same growth rates as an SSR unit. Baksuhin Bakushin indeed.
Of course, to unlock her true potential as a trainee, you’ll want to get Sakura Bakushin O to Star Level 3 as soon as possible if you’re seriously invested in training Sprinters. This is because that racer’s Uniques level up quite a bit at LVL 3, and Genius x Bakushin = Victory is a vastly improved skill that’s worth obtaining. Bakushin’s Potential Levels may be initially confusing, because they almost all want her to be a Front Runner, despite it seeming that she’s a Pace Chaser. This is an issue that can be fixed with Inheritances, and it is generally best to train Sakura Bakushin O as a Front Runner once you can ensure she has an A in the Aptitude. Huge Lead and the evolved version Staggering Lead, paired with other skills, can turn Sakura Bakushin O into an extreme Front Runner, causing her to create gaps that few can keep up with.
Baksuhin benefits from being fairly easy to train, as her career is generally nothing but Sprints and a few longer races; however, it is important to note that she runs a few Mile races, and that the variance in stats can sometimes make those a danger to your Career run if you don’t plan to inherit enough Stamina and/or have a recovery skill or two. If you are looking to make her a Pace Chaser, the Special Week SSR card is great, as it comes with Gourmand, a Pace Chaser Gold Recovery (which also means you can skip Swinging Maestro). If you do end up running a Stamina Card to get Swinging Maestro, Bakushin will certainly benefit from it, and her natural Speed gains will generally counteract any potential loss from Speed Trainings you shift to unlock the skill from Super Creek’s events.
Bakushin is a great beginner Sprinter, but don’t let that fool you into think she’s just for beginners; Sakura Bakushin O can be the best Sprinter in your roster easily, and is one of the best Sprinters in the game currently, and will be for some time. The reason I often remind people that SSR doesn’t mean “better” when it comes to Trainees is mostly due to Sakura Bakushin O and Gold Ship, two of the best Umamusume in the game that are both given to you for free. Bakushin to a brighter tomorrow and use her to help learn how to master Sprints, and you won’t regret the time you spend with her, although your ears might after hearing “BAKUSHIN” seven thousand times.
It’s Good to Be the King: King Halo
For Trainers looking for a challenge, King Halo presents a fairly complex and at times frustrating Career. King Halo initially seems like she is a Medium distance racer, but the reality is that she is a Sprinter, and one of the better ones too. The problem is that her Career has numerous Medium and even Long distance races that can be a disaster to otherwise successful runs, with most of her Sprints coming late in her career. She runs only a single Sprint in her Career, and the rest are Mediums and Miles, which also means that her URA Finale is very likely to be a Medium if you don’t find ways to work in extra races (URA Finale length is based on which type of race you’ve run the most of). Unlike Sakura Baksuhin O, taking Super Creek is almost required if you are trying to skimp on Stamina training, because she needs Swinging Maestro to survive longer races even with the URA Campaign stat buffs. You may also want to see if you can borrow some Inheritances to bump her Medium performance from B to A, which will often really help secure the win with good training.
That said, once you have trained King Halo as a Sprinter, she’s an excellent trainee who can perform exceptionally well and honestly has some of the best potential of most Sprinters. She naturally runs as a Late Surger, but easily can become a Pace Chaser with inheritances. Her Unique is fairly, well, unique, activating off of whether or not she’s run calmly during the race. This wrinkle helps point to the importance of Wit, as higher Wit (generally 300~400 minimum) reduces the chance of getting Late Starts and the Rushed status.
If Sakura Bakushin O provides a good beginner trainee to help refine your runs on, King Halo becomes a great trainee to show off your display of skill as a trainer. A very strong King Halo will generally perform exceptionally well in Team Matches and other places, and she becomes useful when you have Legend Races against Sakura Bakushin O. Personally, King Halo is my favorite Sprinter, and I love training her; her personality, story, and skills all make her very fun to train, but also, the performance is quite something to watch when she gets going. Her Unique also makes for some very fun finishes when it activates, and I generally enjoy seeing her burst forward and clinch wins that seem like she may not have otherwise.
Final Considerations
Sprint is my favorite length in the game. I think the racers are all deeply unique, all with different styles and different personalities that make fun strategies and considerations on builds and techniques. It also helps that two of the best sprinters are easy to obtain, with one being given to you by default, but even the SSR Sprinters can be a blast: Curren Chan is a unique trainee, and if you happen to obtain her, she can your strongest Sprinter with some tactical training. Sprints also make for good training measures of your ability to meet specific goals and better refine the training cycle, as they are slightly more unforgiving than other lengths. Mile and Medium races can be a little more giving as they have to balance different stats just slightly, but Sprints are all about Speed and Power, and not having enough of either is a surefire way to see your racer barely cross the finish line.
Next week, we’ll be taking a look at one of the trickier distances: Miles, which have the difficulty of being squarely between the shortest, fastest races in the game and the barrier of long, endurance based races.
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