SPRINTER SACRE’S RACE IS RUN
... and death of Simonsig is another blow for Henderson
What started as a celebration for trainer Nicky henderson turned into a wake at Cheltenham as he lost two of his best horses within a couple of hours.
the cheers for the trainer’s parading retired dual Queen Mother Champion Chaser Sprinter Sacre were still echoing around jump racing’s greatest auditorium when Simonsig fell at the third fence and broke a hind leg in the Shloer Chase won by Fox Norton.
tears had flowed when henderson had made his lunchtime announcement that Sprinter Sacre was to retire, bringing to an end the career of one of jump racing’s greatest performers.
But the demise of Simonsig, winner of eight of his 13 races, cast a pall. henderson said: ‘all of a sudden the tears go the other way. We have said this was a celebration of Sprinter’s life even if it was the end of his racing one. Now we have the funeral. It’s not fair.’
the careers of Simonsig and Sprinter Sacre had run in parallel. Both were 10 years old, Sprinter Sacre a three-time winner at the Cheltenham Festival and Simonsig twice a winner there.
Sprinter Sacre ultimately fulfilled his massive potential, achieving the third highest steeplechase rating from the respected timeform organisation of 192: only arkle on 212 and Flyingbolt on 210 were rated better. the rating put Sprinter Sacre ahead of even Kauto Star.
But henderson’s grey, Simonsig, was held back by injury.
Yesterday’s run was only his fourth since he added the 2013 arkle Chase to his success in the Neptune Investments Novices’ hurdle in 2012.
henderson, who had nursed Simonsig back with huge patience after a series of injuries, felt that the horse had
turned a corner. ‘Simonsig’s work in the last few weeks has been so good I would not have even worked Sprinter with him at the moment. He would not have gone with him. I thought I had got him back.’
Judging by the appearance of Sprinter Sacre in the paddock before the Shloer Chase, his glistening neck arched with latent power, he also still had much to give. But the plan to tackle Irish ace douvan in next month’s Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown was scrapped when a tendon injury was detected in a foreleg.
a younger horse would have been rested and returned after a year, but time was not on the side of what Henderson (below) regarded as a ‘horse of a lifetime’. It was exactly a year to the day that Sprinter Sacre had won the Shloer Chase to send the Cheltenham crowd into meltdown.
It was a performance that showed the giant French-bred gelding, who possessed the ability to leap like a gazelle with wings, had finally returned to something like his best, after it was discovered that the horse suffered with an irregular heartbeat soon after Barry geraghty pulled him up in the desert Orchid Chase at Kempton’s Christmas meeting in 2013. Three subsequent runs without success over the course of two years fuelled fears that Sprinter Sacre, who raced in the colours of Caroline Mould, would never be able to recapture anything like his best form.
Yet the 2015 Shloer win under jockey nico de Boinville was an opening shot in an unbeaten campaign which carried the gelding to a magnificent second success in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
His first victory in that race had been in 2013 amid a 10-race, two-season unbeaten run in which he was out on his own not only as a two-mile chaser but as a steeplechaser.
Henderson said: ‘In those two years, he was literally unbeatable. He was peerless.
‘You buy these beautiful horses but nine times out of 10 they are useless. They are far too pretty to be racehorses. He looked the part and moved the part.’
Sprinter Sacre did not cost a fortune either. The horse was the hidden gem among a job lot of 22 horses purchased by bloodstock agent david Minton when a French breeder decided to sell his stock for a combined total of just over £240,000. He will never strike a better deal.