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| Brilliant Kingman retired to stud after glittering career on racetrack | Brilliant Kingman retired to stud after glittering career on racetrack |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| John Gosden described Kingman as “certainly the most exciting horse I’ve ever trained” when the horse’s retirement was announced on Monday. The three-year-old, endured his only defeat in an odd-looking 2,000 Guineas, has been suffering from a throat infection and will not be fit in time for next month’s Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, which was to have been his final outing. | |
| “It’s just unfortunate,” Gosden said from his Newmarket stable, “but he’s got this infection, he’s had to be on antibiotics and he’s still on them now. I need to be able to train the horse and at the moment I can’t. I’ve had to tell the owner, I’m not going to get him to that race, I’ve run out of time. But at least he goes out at the top. It wouldn’t have been very clever, rushing him into a race like that half-cocked.” | |
| Having reached his decision that the QEII was impossible, the trainer said he had not been tempted to try getting Kingman ready for the Breeders’ Cup at the start of November. “He’s a very valuable horse for stud now,” Gosden said. | |
| Kingman will retire to Banstead Manor Farm in Newmarket, the stud of his owner, Khalid Abdulla. No fee for his services has yet been announced but prospects for the stud’s business are certainly bright, with Frankel among the other stallions on the premises. | |
| “He was the most fabulous horse to be around,” Gosden reflected. “He had a great mind on him, a great body, very strong and he could go through the gears so quickly.” | |
| Asked to pick the memory of Kingman which would stay with him longest, the trainer said: “The St James’s Palace Stakes [at Royal Ascot] was beyond exciting but one of the strangest races I ever saw was the Sussex [at Glorious Goodwood]. To catch those horses who’ve nicked a couple of lengths on you after a steady gallop was amazing. And then, to know that your horse is approaching one of the sharpest pull-ups in the country at top speed, well …” | |
| Kingman won seven of his eight races and concluded his career with four Group Ones on the bounce, the last of them being the Prix Jacques le Marois at Deauville last month. The only horse that beat him was the 40-1 shot Night Of Thunder in the 2,000 Guineas in May, when the subsequent Derby winner, Australia, was a head back in third. | |
| “The Guineas was not ideal, with the field splitting into two groups and the jockeys all getting anxious and making their moves too soon,” Gosden said. “It was just one of those races but it’s history now and he won those other races in stunning fashion this year.” | |
| Australia is now favourite for the QEII with Paddy Power. It must be doubtful whether connections of the Irish colt will, in the final analysis, wish to commit him to a top-class race over just a mile when there is the 10-furlong Champion Stakes on the same card as a more orthodox alternative. But he would earn no end of praise if showing enough speed to win the shorter race. | |
| There was also bad news on Monday for Richard Hannon, Gosden’s main rival for this year’s trainer’s title, who said that his Basateen would have to miss Saturday’s Royal Lodge Stakes with an unusual injury. “He was out in the paddock, rolling in the sun, and, where he’d been pawing at the ground, he dug up a little flint and then sat on it and had to have three stitches,” Hannon told At The Races. | |
| “He’s definitely a horse for next year. There was a time, and hopefully he still is, that I thought he was one of our best two-year-olds.” | |