Injury forces early end to Belle Cheval’s career

The glittering racing career of Group 1 winner Belle Cheval has come to a premature end.

The Group 1 Vinery Stud Stakes (2000m) heroine resumed at Caulfield last Saturday in the Gr.3 Courtza Stakes (1200m), where she finished last, and following the race she was found to have a respiratory complaint, and the decision was made to retire her from the track.

Bred and raced by well-known racing identity David Archer, Belle Cheval is by the late champion New Zealand sire Savabeel and out of Keepa Cheval, a winning half-sister to Archer’s 10-time Group 1 winner Mufhasa. Belle Cheval is a half-sister to Archer’s other star performer, three-time Group 1 winner Bostonian, while her half-sister Vitesse is also the dam of Group 1 winner Kovalica.

With such a rich pedigree, there were plenty of expectations surrounding Belle Cheval heading into her racing career, and Archer entrusted her to the care of Te Akau Racing trainers Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson at Matamata.

“She is a valuable broodmare and we love her very much,” Archer said. “It is not worth putting her through what she would need to go through to see if we could save her racing career, so we are going to do the right thing by her and retire her.

“She has been a great horse and given us a lot of fun, and we were looking forward to the next two to three years (racing), but that is not going to be.

“Graeme Rogerson said to me after she won her second start at Ellerslie ‘you have got your next Mufhasa’. We had Mufhasa and Bostonian, and to get three like that in one lifetime is great.”

With her racing career coming to an end and spring now underway, Archer’s attention is now on the breeding season, and he said she will stay in Australia for her first mating before returning to New Zealand.

“We have talked to the key players we know here and we are looking to put her to an Australian stallion and then bring her home,” Archer said. “We have had contact from some of the studs in Australia, who rate her extremely highly.