The first sale of 2026 at Park Paddocks will be preceded not only by a parade of 11 stallions, but also by a showing of eight former racehorses, now well-settled into second careers.
The Newmarket sales ring of Tattersalls, Britain’s – indeed Europe’s – oldest and leading bloodstock auctioneers is naturally synonymous with the racehorses and broodmares of tomorrow. Eight of the 11 Group winners parading immediately before the two-day Tattersalls February Sale this week have passed through it.
When those Group winners return to ‘Tatts’ on Thursday, they’ll do so as stallions at various stages of second careers spent in the covering sheds of Great Britain.
But not every retiring racehorse can fall effortlessly into ready-made post-competitive lives as sires or broodmares. That will be reflected with a preceding parade at 11am.
There’s the small matter of geldings, who constitute most of the male jumping population and a large portion of the Flat brigade too.
For them, though, there are solutions still, showing being one discipline in a cornucopia of options proffered by Retraining of Racehorses (RoR), British racing’s official charity for the welfare of retired equine participants.
You’d expect Tattersalls, which annually turns over hundreds of millions of guineas, to chip into RoR’s work. And contribute it does, not only in handing the charity space to exhibit.
The Tattersalls RoR Open Ridden Show Series, open to four-year-olds and older horses who’ve raced in Great Britain and have appropriate RoR membership, forms part of the RoR Elite Performance Awards.
There are finals at the Royal Highland Show, the Hickstead Derby Meeting and the Jockey Club RoR National Championships, staged at the Aintree Equestrian Centre in August.
“You’d expect Tattersalls, which annually turns over hundreds of millions of guineas, to chip into RoR’s work. And contribute it does, not only in handing the charity space to exhibit.”
Fourteen-year-old Festive Fare, crowned champion at Hickstead last year, will be one of those parading at the RoR Showcase on Thursday morning, his last race for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin having come at Lingfield in the early half of 2016.
In Barracuda Boy, third to take a spin, we might be looking at this year’s champion. Now 16, he gave Tom Dascombe a collection of successes and raced latterly for Marjorie Fife, retiring in 2018 after a couple of last places.
He follows Babochoff, whose second and final start (in a maiden hurdle at Worcester), the Racing Post notes bluntly saw him “hopelessly” tail off seven out. More successful post-career change, he has thrice made it to the Hickstead RoR showing finals, placed each time.
Ahzeemah, a former Flat competitor, but a half-brother to the ‘little Tiger Roll’, will be first into the ring, successfully qualified for both this year’s Tattersalls RoR Amateur Final at Hickstead and the National Championships at Aintree, scene of his half-brother’s two Grand National triumphs.
Last through the ring, Not At Present, retired in 2024 after pulling up twice, claimed last year’s Tattersalls RoR Supreme Champion title. He faces the audience after six-year-old Mischief Magic, one of the most successful – and widely travelled – retirees on display.
Sent out by Charlie Appleby, Mischief Magic carried the Godolphin blue to success in the 2022 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, two months after landing the Sirenia Stakes at Kempton. Starts at Meydan, where he won at Listed level, then in Qatar and America (where he raced four times in the run-up to retirement) closed off his career.
Among fervent jumping enthusiasts, however (there were plenty at last year’s inaugural showcase), Mischief Magic might be upstaged by the grey Bristol De Mai, three-time winner of Haydock’s Betfair Chase.
The now 15-year-old enjoys a non-competitive retirement and isn’t, like Capricorn Prince, who’ll follow him in, active on the showing circuit.
In the case of Capricorn Prince, the Sussex yard of Gary and Josh Moore has been replaced by residency at the British Racing School, where he’s employed to train budding jockeys and last year picked up a side-hustle as a Royal Ascot pony, not least for Aussie superstar Asfoora.
Capricorn Prince has returned to a racecourse, albeit in a new guise, but many fellow racing retirees might never set eyes on racegoers again. Should they join the Tattersalls parade, however, they might instead be given another glimpse of an auctioneer’s rostrum.
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