Popular Gold Coast mare Little Brown Horse will not race again with her connections saying she has earned her retirement.
Trainer Kelly Doughty pulled the pin on a start in Tuesday’s Sunshine Coast Cup, deciding the diminutive mare had done enough.
Little Brown Horse was one of the smallest horses to race in Queensland but her huge heart earned her a big following.
She won 14 races and $468,000 prize money, a great return for a home-bred mare.
Doughty’s husband Gary said there was nothing seriously wrong with the mare but no risks would be taken with her.
“She probably needs eight weeks in the spelling paddock but if we then brought her back she would be a rising eight-year-old mare,” Doughty said.
“We just would never forgive ourselves if anything happened to her.”
He said Little Brown Horse would spend some months enjoying paddock life before she went to stud in the spring.
“She won 14 races for us and not many do that. And not many do that when they are barely 15 hands,” Doughty said.
Little Brown Horse goes out as the winner of her final start over 1600 metres at the Sunshine Coast earlier this month.
Geoff Goold, who rides Honey Toast in Tuesday’s Cup, has fond memories of Little Brown Horse.
“Little Brown Horse was really good to me. I won my first stakes race on her and she always tried so hard,” Goold said.
The Listed Sunshine Coast Cup (1400m) will determine the immediate future of former Melbourne galloper Weinholt.
Weinholt is one of several former Peter Moody-trained horses now with Desleigh Forster at Eagle Farm.
“If Weinholt races well he will probably continue on here. But if not, he will spell and probably go back to Melbourne,” Forster said.
