The curtain has come down on the racing career of champion sprinter Lankan Rupee.
Trainer Mick Price announced Lankan Rupee’s retirement after the gelding ran sixth in Saturday’s Group Two Schillaci Stakes at Caulfield.
Lankan Rupee shot to prominence during an unbeaten four-run preparation during the late summer and autumn of 2014 which included Group One wins in the Oakleigh Plate, Newmarket Handicap and TJ Smith Stakes.
It earned him the ranking as the world’s highest-rated sprinter and he was also crowned the Australian Horse of the Year for the 2013/14.
The gelding added another two Group One wins the following season in the Manikato Stakes and Lightning Stakes.
The eight-year-old had been restricted to just six starts in the past two years because of injury.
Lankan Rupee won 11 of his 29 starts and was placed nine times, earning more than $4 million prize money.
Price, who has had the sprinter since he was a yearling, said he was not going to continue racing the gelding if he wasn’t going to be competitive at the top level.
He said he had to speak to the gelding’s owner Muzaffar Yaseen but Lankan Rupee had a home at Price’s place where he could be re-trained as a showjumper while another option was the Living Legends retirement home for champion horses on the outskirts of Melbourne.
“I just said to Iris O’Farrell (Yaseens’s representative) yesterday that we don’t need to go banging him around for prize money,” Price told RSN927 on Sunday.
“He was only going to run in the good races. I’m not going to let him go down.
“We love our horses.
“He’s probably going to go home. Georgia (Price’s daughter) is 14 and had her eye on him for a fair while.
“And Living Legends have asked about him.
“So I would think if he doesn’t make a happy showjumping type of horse that he may be at Living Legends. He’s been a great horse.”
