I'm kinda jelous of how much romanticism and love the Japs seem to have for their horses, media coverage probably plays a big role there but so many horses seem to have all sorts of quirks to them that people pick up on and attentive fans who follow them regularly even after they've retired, lots of passion involved from the fans, stables and jockeys all around.
My place has a decent horse racing scene that I used to watch way before uma but the horses were always just names with the jockeys being the sole focus, most of them trying to become all sorts of micro-celebs and the horses were pretty much forgotten whenever they weren't racing, and even the winning horses tend to have shitty and short retirements with the stables, jockey and fans not really giving a fuck.
Pic unrelated.