Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Recently I've been playing the English release of Uma Musume. It's the only gachage I've played besides Kancolle over a decade ago, so a lot of the mechanics are fresh to me and I'm enjoying strategising with my horse-girls. But as well as the world of gachage, Uma Musume has reintroduced me into the similarly proud yet seedy world of horseracing. I remember visiting the races once or twice as a child (on their family-friendly days), but finding it generally pretty boring. My favourite part was going to the stables to try and get close to the horses and pat them on their snouts, but it was never something that crossed my mind to do as an adult. Fair to say the equine world is one that has passed me by until now, but since playing this video game I've been reading up more on the workings of this ancient and prestigious sport. Recently I was in the area so decided to spend a day at Newmarket, Suffolk, the "home of horseracing". It was a fun trip, I was able to get a tour of one of the stables and watch the horses train on the gallops. Here I've written a beginners guide to the world of horseracing (with some diagrams!).
^Racehorse training at Newmarket Gallops
Racing horses is a sport older than almost any other. Ever since the first horse was tamed we've liked to pit them against each other to see how fast they run. Often monikered "the Sport of Kings", horseracing has generally been the purview of the rich and powerful as it takes an immense amount of money to breed, train and keep a top-tier racehorse, and as such has a hallowed history in step with the noble classes. Chariot racing was the number one sport in the classical world, starring in the Panhellenic Olympic Games, and even more prominently in the Roman Circus Maximus which drew crowds far larger than gladiatorial battles ever did. Modern horseracing (like basically every sport) has its foundation in England, where it was one of the first great forces of neoclassical sport revival. King Charles II himself was a great patron, personally drafting the ruleset by which modern racing still abides by and funding great breeding programmes in the small town of Newmarket. Newmarket, a town which straddles the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, grew to become the global centre of horseracing and thoroughbred horsebreeding, with all major horseracing countries in the world basing their system off the Newmarket model. On my visit I got an understanding of the area. The town is very much horse-opolis being built on an acid asking the main street. At the southend is the racecourse (closed unfortunately when I visited), and the "hallowed gallops" training ground at the northend where you can watch the horses run (for free). The main street is lined with horse-relates paraphernalia shops and statues of great thoroughbreds of the past. The term "thoroughbred" confused me at first, as it's not just the equine term for "purebred", but is an entirely separate breed of horse entirely. Specifically one that must be able to trace its direct male ancestry back to one of the "Three Founding Stallions" (portrayed as the "Three Goddesses" in Uma Musume):
^A chestnut & a brown throroughbred, both direct descendants of one of the three Founding Stallions.
From these three horses (along with several English-born mares) the English tradition was created. Over time individual bouts morphed into a recognisable calender of annual races, the five eldest of which are known as the "Classics":
To win three of the Classics in a year is seen to be the pinnacle of a horse's career, known as the "Triple Crown" for colts (2000G, Derby, St Leger), or the "Triple Tiara" for fillies (1000G, Oaks, +one other). In racing history there has only ever been 25 horses to claim the title, and only one horse, the venerated filly "Sceptre", has ever won four Classic Races in the same year. The idea of there being 5 Classics and a Triple Crown has disseminated to other nations, and has been adapted to most other countries' racing calenders including Japan, which is why they form a core part of Uma Musume's plot (The Satsuki Sho is the 2000G, the Oka Sho is the 1000G, the Yushun Hinba is the Japanese Oaks, the Tokyo Yushun is the Japanese Derby, and the Kikuka Sho is the Japanese St Leger).
There are of course many other important racedays of the year, the most prominent of which are the Grand National and the Royal Ascot. The Royal Ascot is a full week of races sponsored (and attended) by the Monarch and other members of the Royal Family (hence the strict dresscode). It is the biggest event of the year with over 500 horses competing and around 10 million pounds in prize money (and many more in betting). The biggest prize race of the event is the "Gold Cup" for 650,000 pounds. The Japanese equivalent of the Royal Ascot is the "Tenno Sho" (Emperor's Prize), while the "Japan Cup" is their version of the "Gold Cup". The Grand National on the other hand is held at Aintree in Lancashire and is the highlight of the "steeplechase" calender. Most races are "flat turf races", meaning horses just run across grass; but steeplechases are instead hurdle races in which the course is interrupted by fences, bushes or ditches. A small aside to indulge in interesting etymology: the turn "steeplechase" comes from when the sport involved racing cross-country from a church steeple to another church steeple, with horses having to jump over any intervening hedgerows or other obstacles enroute. In Japan steeplechasing never took off, but instead "dirt races" are held in the American style as a secondary format. For Uma Musume fans you may be wondering where the "Arima Kinen" is, the last important race in the game not mentioned here. The Arima Kinen (originally called the Nakayama Grand Prix) was based instead on the most important race in the French horseracing calender (the "Grand Prix" from where the modern motor-races derive their names), it was later renamed in honour of Prince Yoriyasu Arima, the man who first gave full citizenship to the burakumin. While the Royal Ascot is the most prestigious horseracing event worldwide, the Arima Kinen has by far the largest cash flow with a prize-pot of 1 billion 円 (5.5 million GBP) and bettings exceeding 8 billion 円 (40 million GBP).
^A horse training for his debut in next year's racing season.
Something I like about horseracing is the genuine celebration of the animals themselves. Apart from the much less substantial greyhound racing, its the only time when humans celebrate and get to know another species as celebrities in their own right. In horseracing the human owners, trainers and jockeys play second-fiddle to the real stars, and famous horses of history are remembered as prestigiously as any sportsman of their era. For Uma Musume fans the great Japanese horses of the 90s-00s will be well known to you. Horses like Symboli Rudolf, Tokai Teio and Kitasan Black are household names not only in Japan but in the homes of English horseracing fans also, who I'm sure are incredibly confused when they try to google their favourite classic Japanese horse these days. But its worth going both ways, so here are some exceptional horses from the annals of English racing history:
^Statue of Hyperion, Newmarket
Finally here are two diagrams I mocked up quickly to explain some terminology used when describing horses. Diagram A shows the different terms used for horses of different ages. A note to take is the absence of "pony". Pony is actually a term which refers to adults of horse breeds small in stature such as the Shetland Pony, and can't be used to refer to a young horse.
Dagram B is a colour swatch for the different horse-coat colours. Basically there are three base forms of horse colour: black, bay and chestnut. Bay and chestnut horses can be a wide range of lightness (with dark bay horses being called "brown"), the difference being that chestnut horses have a red aspect to their colour while bays do not. Grey horses are horses who have "greyed" like a human does in old age, and were originally a different colour: they can be light grey or white in colour. True white horses are very rare and are white from birth, they can be differentiated from grey horses by their pink skin underneath their coats (greys will have brown skin). There are also two genes which modify the base colours: the cream-gene and the dun-gene. Creamed horses (don't laugh) are generally lighter in colour and have a more "golden" look, they are mostly found in Spanish (and Mexican/Texan) horses. The dun-gene comes from indigenous European horses and lighten and dull the coat colour to give a "wild" look. The gene also makes the appendages of the horse (feet, tail, mane, face) very dark.
