The anime horse girl who's terrorizing gacha players in Umamusume is based on a real, chaotic racing

If you've been on social media at all this week, there's a good chance you've encountered the horse-crazed masses who've succumbed to the absurd siren call of Umamusume: Pretty Derby. It's a gacha game about horse racing, except the horses are anime girls, and it's got underneath all the gratuitous wobbling and the inherent villainy of its gacha trappings.

Of the titular umamusume, one horse girl has quickly become a fan favorite since the game got its western release at the end of June. If you look at the game's library banner art on Steam, you'll see—tucked in the middle of the determined ponyfolk—one horse girl with an inexplicably mischievous smirk:

This is Gold Ship, and the main thing you need to know about Gold Ship is that she's an asshole.

Where most of the other umamusume are possessed of a heroic drive and noble spirit, Gold Ship is an ungovernable gremlin. She's fickle. She's irritable. She'll often refuse to train, or inflict herself with the Slacker condition and force you to derail your racing prep to clear it.

In races, she might choose to lazily hang at the back of the pack. When she wants to win, she can sometimes simply kick on the afterburners and casually sweep through the competition to a first place finish. Other times, she'll just, you know, not do that. If she does win, she'll celebrate by dropkicking you in the face. And people love her for it.

As compelling as Gold Ship is, the history behind the character is just as incredible. You see, the umamusume are all [[link]] based on real, actual Japanese race horses, and the real Gold Ship was every [[link]] bit the equine chaos agent his anime girl counterpart is—sometimes at the expense of millions and millions of dollars.

In a racing career that ran from 2011 through 2015, Gold Ship acted as a kind of divine punishment inflicted on humanity for daring to gamble on the enterprise of horse racing. He was impossible to predict, sometimes stringing together unparalleled performances just to finish last in his next race in what could seem like a deliberate act of mockery.

The real Gold Ship's crowning achievement of spectacular failure took place at the 2015 Takarazuka Kinen. After starting the season with a poor showing at a G2 race in Nakayama, Gold Ship posted back-to-back G1 wins at the Hanshin Daishoten and the Tenno Sho. Gold Ship was on fire, and he entered the paddock at the Takarazuka Kinen as the overwhelming favorite.

YouTube

But as the race started, spectators watched with horror as Gold Ship went into an inexplicable fit, leaving the gate a full 10 horse lengths behind—an insurmountable gap that would lead to a dismal 15th place finish. The fumble is estimated to have, in moments, worth of betting tickets, around $135 million in today's dollars.

"I'm sorry to those who supported him, but that's typical of him," Gold Ship's jockey, Norihiro Yokoyama, said after the race. "I hope you'll think of that as part of his personality."

After a career of waging psychological warfare on the world of Japanese horse racing, Gold Ship retired at the end of the 2015 season. He now resides at the in Hokkaido, where he's continued to sire a new generation of race horses.

His stud fee currently sits at 4 million yen. By all indications, he's living his best life.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby is available now . As with any gacha game, the standard warnings about predatory monetization apply: If you don't want to put your wallet at risk, you're better off steering clear.