FEATURE SPRINTER SACRE Henderson said: “Sprinter is going to parade before the Shloer and say farewell. If anyone wants him somewhere, to remind us of what he was like, he’s going to be able to come to these sort of dos. “We’re going to miss him. It’s been a great journey. I’ve got one very very sad lad up there. Sarwah Mohammed lives with him day and night; the horse bites him all day and all night and he laughs about it. “Life goes on without him, but it’s been an emotional time over five or six years, and we’ve loved every minute of it. “You wouldn’t know which leg it is - you can’t tell except on a scan. But it wouldn’t hold up in the short term and you can’t go for the long term, so we have had to bite the bullet. “I should think he will be going off to Shropshire at some stage [to David and Juliet Minton’s Mill House Stud to spend his retirement] but we’ll have to borrow him back quite a few times when he’s wanted for days like this “I think the saddest thing will be him in the paddock today - he thinks he’s going to go and have a right good spin round there this afternoon. He thinks he’s here for a completely different reason. He’ll want to race. “He’s been a great part of my life. It’s been an extraordinary journey. If we’d finished it after Kempton [when he was pulled
up in the Desert Orchid Chase in December 2013] then he would have just been the most fantastically good racehorse and you would have been able to leave it alone. But what happened last year is something that will never be repeated, in terms of emotions anyway - it took us all to the brink. “Ability and charisma went together with him - very often they don’t. You go to the sales and buy a beautiful horse and nine times out of 10 they are rubbish - just very pretty. He was the epitome of the horse who looks the part, moves the part, and it has worked. “I think he looks as well as he ever has. He is in staggeringly good form - there’s the sadness. We all said, if he didn’t want to do it, he’d be telling us in his work. He’s giving us all the right signs and is in fantastic form. It’s three weeks until the Tingle Creek and he would have worked yesterday. “We’ve been very lucky over the years, and I’m going on so there is room for more. For a long time I protected See You Then as my best horse, but those two years when Sprinter Sacre was unbeatable... He never disappointed, not until it went wrong - he was peerless. “There was probably no bigger day than today last year. It wasn’t his final hour - he improved all year afterwards, and to me he was nearly a better horse at Sandown than he was at
© Steven Cargill
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course-specialist.co.uk
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December 2016