Haru Urara lifeless: Racehorse inspired Uma Musume | College News
Haru Urara, the mare who received over horse racing fanatics in Japan and overseas with her perpetual dropping streak, has died. She was 29.
Yuko Miyahara, a consultant for Urara’s longtime care facility Matha Farm in the southeast Chiba prefecture of Japan, confirmed to Japanese outlet Friday Digital that the animal athlete died early Tuesday of colic. She was surrounded by employees.
“Urara was 29. In human years that’s almost 90, but really, until yesterday she was doing really well,” Miyahara said in the article, which was translated to English. “It was so sudden … lately Uhara was getting visitors even from outside Japan. It’s really unfortunate.”
The horse, whose title interprets to Glorious Spring, debuted in 1998 at the Kochi Racecourse. The monitor marketed its resilient star’s dropping streak as half of its efforts to keep in business. Urara’s repute — bolstered by her signature pink racing equipment and fan merchandise — breached the edges of the Kochi racetrack and made her a global phenomenon. In 2004 former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi even expressed his help for the mare.
“I’d like to see Haru Urara win, even just once,” Koizumi said. “The horse is a good example of not giving up in the face of defeat.”
Trained by her longtime coach Dai Muneishi, Urara stored racing — she misplaced a complete of 113 races and completed second in only 4 of those — until her retirement in August 2004. Her proprietor at the time parted methods with the Kochi racetrack and Urara disappeared for a number of years after her retirement. Since 2014 she had been receiving care at Matha Farms.
Her profession and surprising global fame had been the subject of the 2016 ESPN documentary “The Shining Star for Losers Everywhere.”
“At the time, Haru Urara must have been a star of hope for the losers,” coach Muneishi said in the documentary.
Interest in Urara’s legacy of dropping and resilience reignited earlier this yr with the global release of the cellular sport “Uma Musume: Pretty Derby” in June. “Uma Musume,” initially launched in Japan in 2021, is a racing simulator that re-imagines real-life racehorses as anime horsegirls. Players are “trainers” who help racers, leveling them up to climb the ranks. In the video sport, Haru Urara is a horsegirl whose options are numerous shades of pink. Her character is also featured in the “Uma Musume: Pretty Derby” anime sequence.
The sport’s official X (previously Twitter) account shared the news of the racehorse’s death “with heavy hearts” and mourned the “legendary” athlete.
“We share our condolences to all the staff involved in Haru Urara’s care,” the post said.
Times employees author Tracy Brown contributed to this report.
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