DUBAI, Sept 7: Sakhee, billed as the world’s best race horse in 2001, is set to retire to an English stud farm for the 2003 breeding season, the Dubai-based Godolphin operation said Saturday.

“Sakhee is set to retire to Shadwell Stud in Norfolk for the 2003 breeding season. The horse is scheduled to stay in training until the end of the season although his autumn campaign has yet to be confirmed,” Godolphin said on its website.

The five-year-old, last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, was rated World Champion in the 2001 International Classifications.

“He has all the credentials for making an outstanding stallion,” said Richard Lancaster, stud director at Shadwell Stud.

“We are obviously delighted to be having Sakhee at Shadwell. He will join our other new stallion Act One and they together with Green Desert will make up a formidable stallion team for 2003,” Lancaster said.

Sakhee has run only three times this year.

He won a conditions event at Dubai’s Nad al-Sheba in February by nine lengths, finished third to Street Cry in the following month’s Group One Dubai World Cup at the same course and, most recently, finished second to Wellbeing in the Group Three Prix Gontaut-Biron at Deauville on August 10.

Sakhee was bred in the United States at Emirati Finance Minister Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktoum’s Shadwell Farm and is from the first crop of the 1995 champion miler Bahri, winner of the Group One Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and Group One St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot.—AFP