I love career maidens.

One of my favourite pieces I’ve ever written was an essay about Eight Gauge…no longer a maiden, though it took over fifty tries for that to become the case.  My weekly email newsletter is called “The Career Maiden”, and the #CuteNoseAlert in the first issue was none other than forty-eight start maiden (and total sweetheart) Orphanellie.  There’s just something I love about those horses who keep showing up and trying, even though they never quite get it right.  I can relate to them far more than I can relate to the stakes winners, the graded-calibre performers, the horses considered successful.

Today, I watched a short film about a career maiden I did not know before, a Japanese horse named Haru Urara.  Her blinkers were too cute for words, she came along at just the right time for Kochi Racecourse, and the makers of this film did a fantastic job of telling her story.

Sit back for twenty minutes, and see it for yourself.

When I say horse racing is a game of stories, this epitomizes what I mean.