Time has been called on the racing career of Irish champion Caspian Prince (Ire) (Dylan Thomas {Ire}–Crystal Gaze {Ire}, by Rainbow Quest) due to a flare up of an old injury. The popular gelding, currently co-owned by Stephen Louch, excelled at sprint distances and accumulated 23 wins and 22 placings from 115 starts with earnings of $1,249,597. Trained in his later years by Michael Appleby, the Ballygallon Stud Ltd.-bred chestnut won the 2017 G2 Sapphire S. and 2016 Listed Mercury S. and was placed in another four black-type races, three at group level. He was named an Irish highweight as an 8-year-old over five to seven furlongs in 2017. A winner of a Beverly contest on June 15, he switched to the all-weather and saluted over the minimum trip at Newcastle on June 25. His final start was a sixth back on turf at Ascot on July 23.
“He's been a legend, an absolute star, he's a nice character and I've been privileged to train him,” Appleby said. “We've had some great times with him. We've had him for the last few years of his career and he always gives his all, he's a favourite in the yard with the staff.
“He's broken track records as a 12-year-old, you won't see many horses doing that, I think he's the oldest horse in England to win a class two. We've not been hard on him at all, we didn't do too much with him because we kept him for the track.”
The 12-year-old will now be retrained for a second career in another discipline.
“We were half-thinking of keeping him at home and just putting him in the field with a couple of horse that have retired, but I don't think he's ready for that,” he said. “I think he'd still like to be active and doing something else.
“We'll find a really nice home for him with somebody who'll want to do ROR [retraining of racehorses] or dressage with him because I think he'd still love to be doing something.
“We'll find a home for him and have him on loan there so that if they ever don't want him, we'll be having him straight back.”
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