A Happy Retirement for the Worst Racehorse in Australia

Eleven years old with 90 starts and not a single win–Australia’s worst racehorse, Vote for Lust, has finally found his calling.

[top image: Youtube]

His owner and trainer, John Castleman says, “He’s just really, really bad.”

His three-year-old half-brother, also owned by John Castleman, says, ”He Ain’t My Brother.”

Three-time Melbourne Cup winner Glenn Boss says, “If he could have a beer and a steak sandwich, I reckon he would.”

[Youtube]

You might think a horse with such a dismal racing record would have an uncertain future. But Vote for Lust was so bad, he was good–he had quite the cult following, with hordes of fans at the track wanting to take pictures with him, as well as 788 Facebook fans and 363 Twitter followers. What he lacked in speed, he made up for with personality.

“He was good to have around the place, he was everyone’s mate,” said Castleman, who kept racing the mellow horse to cover expenses, but also valued him as a calming influence when breaking young horses. Now, he’s living the good life–Castleman gave the horse to his fourteen-year-old granddaughter, who has been keeping busy retraining him for a slower-paced life.

Castleman once enlisted the help of champion jockey Glenn Boss to ride ‘Lusty’ in the Betfair Maiden Plate, but after a strong start, the horse  soon started lagging behind. He has had a few second-place finishes…out of two.

Castleman is clearly fond of ‘Lusty’, but according to CNN, he “struggles to believe that there could possibly be a worse horse on the planet.”

Unfortunately, it may run in the family–Vote for Lust’s three-year-old half-brother, He Ain’t My Brother, has come in dead last both times he’s run so far.

Go Riding.