Arc winner Alpinista retired to stud after small setback

Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Alpinista has been retired with immediate effect after picking up a minor injury ahead of her intended swansong in the Japan Cup.

The Sir Mark Prescott-trained five-year-old won six Group One races, capped by her scintillating success under jockey Luke Morris at ParisLongchamp last month.

She will be retired to owner Kirsten Rausing’s Lanwades Stud in Newmarket.

“I’m not having a good morning, because we can’t run Alpinista in Japan. I’ve had a grumpy day,” Prescott told the PA news agency.

“She had a bit of heat in her leg last night when I was at the Cartier Awards dinner. William (Butler, assistant trainer) looked round and didn’t like her, thought there was heat in the leg.

“When I got back and when I looked at her first thing this morning, I wasn’t happy, so that’s it – she retires.”

“She has been marvellous and hasn't been beaten for two years, she won six Group Ones in three different countries. She has been fantastic.

“She will join a wonderful broodmare brand at Miss Rausing's."

Alpinista won eight consecutive races over a mile and a half, the last six all at the highest level.

She ran three times this year, landing the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, Yorkshire Oaks and Arc.

Plans to end her career in Tokyo had to be sadly shelved, much to the Newmarket handler's chagrin.

Prescott added: “The other terrible thing is the Japanese have bent over backwards to help us – I feel very guilty. They have done absolutely everything they could to make things easy for us.

“I felt as guilty letting them know as I did poor Miss Rausing.

“She took it well. She never flinches. But when you are 5-2 to win six million, whoever you are, it is a blow. It would have been a big thrill to win, because it is a big sum when you are 5-2 to win six million.

“She will be retired and I think, almost for Miss Rausing, almost there is a tinge of relief, because the filly has done so well and it would have been so awful if something had gone wrong out there.

“It is never easy travelling that far and the thought of looking at her every morning over your garden fence is not a bad thought.

“If it is the highest-rated filly in the world outside your back door, it must give you tremendous satisfaction.

“So, it is a moderate morning. I won't find one as good as her – it has taken me 53 years to find this one!”

Asked if he planned to continue with his training career, the 74-year-old added: “Oh yes, I'll continue. If you are a trainer you have to take these things in your stride. It is much harder for the owner and much harder for the girl who looks after her. But if you are a trainer, you are so used to disaster.

“Paul Cole is a great man. He once said the best thing about training is you can't worry about any disaster for too long, because a catastrophe has just taken place!

“I wish I'd thought of that line. I think it is the best remark about training ever made.”

Luke Morris can look back at Alpinista’s racing career with great fondness and great pride as the man who steered her six Group One victories – culminating in that momentous day in Paris last month.

While widely considered as one of the weighing room’s hardest working jockeys, Morris is not a regular diner at the top table.

The 34-year-old broke his top-level duck aboard the Clive Cox-trained Gilt Edge Girl in the 2010 Prix de l’Abbaye, a feat he repeated six years later on board Sir Mark Prescott’s Marsha – a high-class sprinter who also provided him with a first British Group One in the following year’s Nunthorpe.

But in Alpinista Morris finally found his horse of a lifetime, guiding her to all but one of her 10 career triumphs including those six Group Ones in three different countries – a run which reached its climax as she sauntered clear in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

“I’m extremely privileged and I was extremely lucky to be able to ride her,” he said.

“To win six Group Ones on the spin was a massive achievement, culminating in the Arc, and I can’t thank Sir Mark, Miss (Kirsten) Rausing (owner-breeder) and all the team at Heath House enough.

“It’s been an incredible journey and I’ll look back on her career very fondly.”

Alpinista’s first three wins at the highest level all came in Germany last year, while Saint-Cloud in France was the stage for her first of this season.

She then dispelled any notion she reserved her best performances for on the continent when downing last weekend’s Breeders’ Cup heroine Tuesday in August’s Yorkshire Oaks before bringing the house down at ParisLongchamp by sealing one of the most popular Arc wins in recent memory.

Morris acknowledges he may never throw his leg over another horse like Alpinista – but hopes her achievements may open up further opportunities for him going forward.

He added: “She’s been wonderfully handled by Sir Mark and all the team and she’s just been marvellous – she never never once let us down.

“It’s fantastic that Miss Rausing is now going to have her back at Lanwades (Stud). Hopefully she can be just as successful as a broodmare.

“Hopefully we find another good one somewhere along the line and hopefully it may open up a door or two. I’ll just keep working hard and hopefully another nice one comes along again.”

Owner-breeder Kirsten Rausing was full of praise for all who have been associated with Alpinista after the curtain came down on the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner’s on-track career.

“It’s not completely the end, but the end of her racing career and I’m so absolutely thrilled, delighted and very grateful for all that has achieved,” said Rausing, who was honoured at the Cartier Awards on Wednesday night when she received the Cartier/Daily Telegraph Award of Merit.

“That is all thanks to Sir Mark’s wonderful training and Luke Morris’ fantastic riding – Sir Mark’s meticulous planning and his great expert horsemanship was the route of all this success.

“And indeed, I am grateful to Annabel Willis who has looked after Alpinista since she arrived at Heath House and to my own team who have looked after her as a yearling and even for 11 months before her birth really, it has been a great team effort and I’m very fortunate to work with such exceptional horsemen.

“I’m so grateful we have achieved all that she has done. I would assume she will be world champion older mare, I can’t quite see anything rated higher than her, so it is a pity we didn’t go to Japan but I’m more than happy to settle for what she has achieved so far.”

Having been unbeaten since April of 2021, Alpinista’s finest hour came at Longchamp last month in Europe’s richest middle-distance contest.

Reflecting on that first Sunday in October, the owner/breeder revealed she defied her usual pessimism to have full confidence in her star mare coming out on top in the French capital.

“Well, it was a very strange day, and it took a little while to sink in,” continued Rausing.

“I was actually very confident that she would win, and I’m not known to be of an optimistic nature – I like to think of myself as a realist, but many of my friends would feel I border on pessimist.

“I surprised myself that I was very confident she would win. Since she won the Yorkshire Oaks beating Tuesday I was 100 per cent certain she would win the Arc and indeed the market thought so too as she started favourite.”

And she believes that confidence was shared by Alpinista’s trainer, the legendary master of Heath House.

“I tell you it wasn’t that difficult at all, he likes to play to the gallery a bit about that,” added Rausing on Prescott’s pre-race assertions that it took some arm twisting from the owner to convince him to cross the Channel.

“I’ve won seven Group Ones in Germany and he has won six in Germany, and we’ve never attended any of them. But I broke my duck with Alpinista when she won the Yorkshire Oaks, so I knew there wasn’t a hoodoo, and we could both go to Paris.”

The Swedish philanthropist has owned many champions and also bred many Group One and Classic winners over the years including the likes of Irish Derby and Ascot Gold Cup winner Fame And Glory and this year’s St Leger champion Eldar Eldarov.

Alpinista’s achievements rightly stand equal among some of the great horses she has been associated with.

“She’s certainly up there among the very best,” Rausing added.

“Her great aunt Alborada was twice winner of the Champion Stakes and indeed a world champion herself, she was obviously a wonderful mare and the first one for me in my own colours and trained by Sir Mark of course. Then there is Alborada’s own sister Albanova who is in the third dam of Alpinista – she was a triple Group One winner herself in Germany and a great champion. So we have had some nice animals.

“Alpinista has been marvellous, and she represents so much work, time and patience that has gone into her and her decedents as well, because they’ve been with me for five generations. And it is not just my own work but that of my team here at Lanwades and at St Simon and indeed at Staffordstown in County Meath where my animals spend their yearling days.”

Now attentions turn to Alpinista’s breeding career – but just as with her racing career, patience will be the order of the day.

“It takes time,” Rausing continued. “Her first offspring if all goes well will be a two-year-old of 2026 and a three-year-old of 2027, but these things take time and I’ve been at it a long time, so I’ve learned patience is key.”