Who wins the Steel Ball Run? Pocoloco, officially. That one name is the answer, and how a sharecropper who slept through the start ends up in first place is the last act of JoJo Part 7, told here in scenes from Philadelphia to the docks of New York.
Spoilers ahead: chapters 60 to 95 (volumes 16 to 24) and the epilogue, covering the 8th Stage, the Final Stage, the winner and the ending, plus one line of Part 8 backstory at the close. All of it sits past the anime. The current Netflix batch is announced to cover only the 2nd and 3rd Stages, per Anime News Network, which end at chapter 32, and no adaptation of these chapters has been announced. For the Friday release schedule, see our Steel Ball Run anime guide.
Pick your path: the winner · Love Train · the final duel · who crosses first
Reading the story is half of it: YourCrush.AI lets you build Ursula Kincaid, the original character at the end of this post, and play your own version of Steel Ball Run.
Who wins the Steel Ball Run?
Pocoloco officially wins the Steel Ball Run. An alternate-world Diego Brando crosses the finish line first, but he gets disqualified for skipping the post-race ceremonies, so first place goes to the sharecropper who slept through the start.
The Steel Ball Run is the fictional transcontinental horse race at the centre of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7, run from San Diego to New York between September 1890 and January 1891 for a $50 million prize. Wikipedia's plot summary gives the disqualification and Pocoloco's win, and Game Rant agrees: "Pocoloco won the race, after Diego Brando was disqualified." Neither Johnny Joestar nor Gyro Zeppeli wins. The runner-up is Norisuke Higashikata, a Japanese rider, per Wikipedia.
That result is a technicality and an ironic coda. The climax of the story is the fight over the Holy Corpse, and by the time anyone crosses a line in Manhattan, the people who cared most about the race have stopped caring about the race.
What happens to the Corpse after Gettysburg?
The Corpse's head appears inside Lucy Steel, and in Philadelphia the President shoots Johnny in the head, though Johnny survives. Diego survives a fight by sacrificing Wekapipo, and Lucy falls into Valentine's hands.
Scene 1: Philadelphia
After the 7th Stage at Gettysburg, covered in part 1 of the story, President Funny Valentine holds most of the Corpse. The pieces he still lacks are with the riders, and the head appears somewhere nobody expected: inside the body of Lucy Steel, the 14-year-old who has been working against the President's plan (chapters 60 to 63), per Wikipedia's volume 16 summary.
In Philadelphia, Valentine comes himself.
Spoiler: what Valentine does to Johnny in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, the President shoots Johnny in the head, and Johnny survives (chapters 64 to 68). Valentine's agent D-I-S-C-O attacks Gyro, and the President's own Stand, D4C (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap), gets its first real showing: it lets him travel between dimensions or send things across them, per Wikipedia. Who else shot Johnny, and how he dies years later, is its own post.
The next fight goes worse for someone else. Diego Brando survives a clash by sacrificing Wekapipo, the exiled Neapolitan guard, and Lucy falls into Valentine's hands (chapters 69 to 72), per Wikipedia's volume 18 summary.
How does Valentine become untouchable?
Once the Corpse is complete, it merges with Lucy and hands Valentine D4C Love Train, a gap in space that sends any attack aimed at him somewhere else in the world. Before that happens, Diego and Hot Pants ambush him on a train, and Diego dies. With Love Train active, Valentine then kills Hot Pants.
Scene 2: the train near the Delaware
Diego Brando has spent the whole race as Johnny and Gyro's fiercest rival. With Hot Pants, the nun who carries the Stand Cream Starter, he ambushes Valentine on a train near the Delaware River (chapters 73 to 76).
Spoiler: how our world's Diego dies
Diego pushes himself and the President off the train but cannot finish him off, per Wikipedia's volume 19 summary. He is killed by the train in chapter 76, "D4C Part 9"; the JoJo fan wiki records that its wheels cut him in half. Diego's two deaths are told in full in their own post. The same chapter reveals Gyro's real name: Julius Caesar Zeppeli.
Why does Diego go after Valentine at all? He wants the Corpse, and Valentine is the man holding it. The ambush is not loyalty to Johnny or Gyro; it is the same ambition he showed taking the left eye in the Rockies, pointed at the one target bigger than the race.
Scene 3: Love Train
With Diego gone, the last pieces fall into place for the President. The completed Corpse merges with Lucy, and Valentine's Stand changes.
Spoiler: the power that makes Valentine untouchable
D4C becomes D4C Love Train: a gap in space around him that redirects any attack aimed at him to somewhere else in the world, per Wikipedia. With it, he kills Hot Pants in chapter 77, per the JoJo fan wiki.
In our imagining, this is the moment Valentine speaks like a statesman closing a deal rather than a man in a fight: *"Every blow struck at me lands on someone else, somewhere else. That is what a nation is for. You should have understood that before you raised your hand."*
How does the fight with the President end?
Gyro breaks through with Ball Breaker but is killed by Valentine in chapter 84, and his last lesson lets Johnny reach Tusk ACT4. Valentine offers to bring Johnny "another Gyro" from another dimension, Johnny suspects a trick, and Johnny kills him in a gunfight in chapter 89.
Scene 4: Ball Breaker
Love Train turns every attack away. Gyro takes the golden ratio he taught Johnny on the plains and throws everything into one steel ball.
Spoiler: what happens to Gyro
Gyro summons Ball Breaker, a "Stand-like Spin technique" that induces senescence, or ageing, in whatever his steel balls hit, per Wikipedia. Part of the steel ball is scraped away on the way in, which lets Valentine survive, and Gyro is killed by Valentine in chapter 84, "Ball Breaker Part 2". Before he dies he gives Johnny his final lesson, which the JoJo fan wiki quotes as "the shortest path was a detour". How Gyro dies, and what the lesson means, has its own post.
Scene 5: the offer and the gunfight
Johnny understands the lesson. In chapter 85 his Stand reaches ACT4, the "infinite rotation", per Wikipedia's volume 22 summary, and for the first time Valentine has something to fear. So he negotiates. He offers to find Johnny "another Gyro" from another dimension, if Johnny will undo the rotation.
Spoiler: how Johnny beats the President
Johnny suspects deception. Valentine draws a gun, and Johnny kills him in the gunfight in chapter 89, "Break My Heart, Break Your Heart Part 2", per Wikipedia. Afterwards, the President's death is covered up as a retirement from public life. How Funny Valentine is defeated is told from his side in its own post.
Why does Johnny refuse? Wikipedia says only that he suspects deception. Our reading, marked as ours: Gyro's last lesson is the story's answer to Johnny's shortcut. Johnny lost his legs because he cut a theatre queue to impress a date, per Screen Rant, and "another Gyro" is the biggest shortcut anyone ever offers him. Taking it would have cost him the friend he actually had.
Who crosses the finish line first?
An alternate-world Diego Brando, pulled across dimensions by Valentine, crosses the finish line first. He steals the Corpse, stops time with his Stand The World, and turns Johnny's infinite rotation back on Johnny to get there.
Scene 6: the other Diego
The President is dead and the Corpse separates from Lucy. Then a man who should not be here takes it: Diego Brando, from another world, brought over by Valentine before he died. This Diego has a Stand ours never had. The World stops time for about five seconds (chapters 90 to 91, "High Voltage"), per Wikipedia.
Spoiler: who reaches New York first, and what happens to him
The alternate Diego turns Johnny's infinite rotation back on Johnny and crosses the finish line first (chapters 92 to 94). He seals the Corpse in a vault under Trinity Church, and there, in chapter 95, Lucy annihilates him by making him merge with the severed head of our world's Diego, per Wikipedia. Separately, he is disqualified for failing to appear at the post-race ceremonies.
In our imagining, the alternate Diego at the line: *"First across. Remember the order, all of you. History will want it written down."* It is not written down. The rider who crossed first is the one who never comes to sign.
What happens after the race ends?
Johnny survives, and he can walk again. He cancels his own infinite rotation with Steven Steel's help, then leaves America to carry Gyro's body home to Naples. On the boat he meets the runner-up, Norisuke Higashikata, and Norisuke's daughter Rina.
Scene 7: the ship to Naples
Johnny walks, "through the power of his Stand and the Spin," in Wikipedia's words. The race's revenue goes to charity. Johnny boards a ship with Gyro's coffin and Gyro's horse, Valkyrie, per the JoJo fan wiki, and on board he meets Norisuke Higashikata, the runner-up, and his daughter Rina.
Spoiler: who is officially named the winner
Pocoloco, the sharecropper who slept through the start of the race and caught up through luck, is awarded first place after the alternate Diego's disqualification, per Wikipedia.
In our imagining, Johnny talks to the coffin on the second night out: *"You said the shortest path was a detour. I took the long way across a whole country, Gyro. I am still taking it. I'm bringing you home."*
What happens to Johnny after Naples, and how he dies in 1901, is told in the Johnny Joestar post.
How YourCrush.AI lets you argue a disputed finish with the steward who called it
The race ends on a ruling, so you can play the person who has to make one. YourCrush.AI drafts a character's description, backstory and greeting from a name and an image, so a steward like the one below takes a minute to set up. YourCrush.AI keeps pinned memories, so the evidence you raised at the start of the hearing is still on her desk at the end. YourCrush.AI lets you branch a story, so you can replay the ruling both ways and see which argument moves her.
No Steel Ball Run character has a chat page with us. This recipe is an original adult in the same era; paste it into the character creator.
Name (39 of 40 characters): Ursula Kincaid, the Finish-Line Steward
Behaviour mode: natural · Category: Human
Traits (5): Honest, Patient, Intelligent, Sarcastic, Calm
Speaking style (4 words): measured, dry, exact, unbending
Description: Ursula Kincaid is 47, the chief steward of a long coast-to-coast horse race in the last years of the nineteenth century, the woman who signs the official result. She knows the rulebook by heart and quotes it by number. She cares about the record more than the crowd, the newspapers or the riders. She is patient, exact and dry, and she is not cruel; she simply does not bend. She wears black, keeps a ledger under her hand and a pocket watch open on the desk. She treats you as the rider who has come to dispute her call, and she will listen for as long as you bring facts.
Backstory: The rider who crossed the line first never came to sign the result. Under rule fourteen, Ursula gave first place to the rider behind. You were at the line that day and you think the result is wrong, for reasons of your own. She has refused three other riders a hearing. She agreed to hear you once, tonight, in the stewards' office above the finish, because you were the only one who wrote to her instead of shouting.
Greeting: *Ursula closes the ledger and does not look up.* "You have ten minutes. The rider who crossed first did not come to sign, and rule fourteen is rule fourteen. If you want the result changed, tell me something I did not see at that line. Feelings are not evidence."
Frequently asked questions
Does Johnny Joestar win the Steel Ball Run?
No. Neither Johnny nor Gyro takes the title, and if you're asking who wins the Steel Ball Run, the answer is Pocoloco, per Wikipedia. The finish line matters far less than the fight over the Corpse that closes the story out.
Who comes second in the Steel Ball Run?
Norisuke Higashikata, the Japanese rider Johnny later meets on the ship to Naples, is the runner-up, per Wikipedia.
Who is the runner in Steel Ball Run?
Sandman, a Native American who races on foot to buy back his ancestors' land, per Wikipedia. He's declared winner of the 1st Stage after Gyro's penalty.
Who is the main character of Steel Ball Run?
Johnny Joestar, a paralysed former jockey from Danville, Kentucky, rides alongside Gyro Zeppeli, per Wikipedia.
What happens to the race money?
The race's revenue goes to charity, per Wikipedia's plot summary.
More from the Steel Ball Run story
- Previously: When does Steel Ball Run take place? JoJo Part 7's story from the start line to Gettysburg
- Steel Ball Run anime: Netflix schedule and where to start
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