Tragedy at Cheltenham as brilliant Starchitect suffers a fatal break

TRAGEDY marred Cheltenham’s final meeting of the year when David Pipe-trained Starchitect suffered a fatal injury when seemingly bound for victory in the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup.

The 13-2 shot was seven lengths clear heading to the penultimate fence and pulling further away when he shattered a hind leg.

It let in Nicky Richards-trained Guitar Pete to lift the £68,000 first prize and give 23-year-old jockey Ryan Day the biggest win of his career.

Guitar Pete stayed on after the final fence to haul back 3-1 favourite Clan De Obeaux to win by two and threequarter lengths.

But Day returned to polite applause as the crowd digested the sad scene that had unfolded and been shown live on ITV4.

Starchitect was pulled up swiftly by Tom Scudamore.

The emotional jockey said: ‘Up until that moment there were no signs that anything was wrong. He had never felt better.

‘I haven’t seen a replay of it and I’m not going to. I just feel sad for the horse because he had been knocking on the door so many times and today was possibly going to be his day and it wasn’t.’

Pipe (below) said: ‘No horse deserves that and Starchitect definitely didn’t. He was a tough customer who had been to all the big festivals and run in big races over hurdles and fences and always tried his heart out. This could have been his day.’ Starchitect, carrying the colours of leading owners Clare and Paul Rooney, had won six of his 25 races, run at three Cheltenham Festivals and would probably have won the 2016 Betfair Hurdle at Newbury had he not made a bad jumping error at the last.

Victory in yesterday’s feature race, the International Hurdle, went to a horse in My Tent Or Yours who had become better known for races he didn’t win.

Since his last success over obstacles in the 2013 Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, the 10-year-old had finished second in the Champion Hurdle three times.

In receipt of 6lb, My Tent Or Yours denied runner-up The New One an unprecedented fourth win by a length and a quarter under Barry Geraghty.