Gold Ship

Gold Ship (Japanese: ゴールドシップ, Hepburn: Gōrudo Shippu; foaled 6 March 2009) is a retired Japanese Thoroughbred racehorse and sire. In a racing career which began in July 2011, he ran twenty-eight times and won thirteen races. As a two-year-old in 2011, he won two of his four races. In 2012, he won the Satsuki Shō and the Kikuka Shō, the first and third legs of the Japanese Triple Crown. In December, he defeated a strong field in the weight-for-age invitational Arima Kinen, which led to his being rated the best three-year-old racehorse in the world by some authorities. As a four-year-old, he ran disappointingly in the Tennō Shō but returned to form to win the Takarazuka Kinen. As a five-year-old, Gold Ship became the first horse to record a second victory in the Takarazuka Kinen and in 2015 he added a win in the Tennō Shō. He is known for his unpredictable temperament, with major wins being interspersed with inexplicably poor efforts.