LONDON, July 20: Racing has lost one of its greatest equine sons with the death at stud of the 1989 Epsom Derby hero Nashwan.

The son of Blushing Groom was humanely put down when complications set in following what should have been a routine operation on his right hind leg on Friday evening.

Nashwan set the racetrack alight in his three-year-old campaign 13 years ago, capturing the English 2,000 Guineas, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes and Coral Eclipse on top of his Derby success.

After a below par third in his Arc prep in the Prix Niel he was retired to Shadwell Stud for whom this was a second bitter blow following the death earlier this year of Nashwan’s half-brother, Unfuwain.

Stud director Richard Lancaster said Saturday: “Everyone at Shadwell is absolutely stunned by the loss of this great horse and the thoroughbred world has lost in Nashwan and Unfuwain two wonderful contributors to the breed in a very short space of time.”

Nashwan was trained by the wheelchair-bound Dick Hern, who himself passed away recently, and ran in the colours of Hamdan Al Maktoum.

Maktoum had famously stood by Hern when he was controversially evicted from his stable by Queen Elizabeth II - the member of Dubai’s ruling family funding a new purpose built yard for his friend and trainer who had served as a major in the British army.

Willie Carson rode Nashwan on all his seven starts.

One man in the thick of the horse’s remarkable racing story was Hern’s assistant, Marcus Tregoning, now a trainer in his own right with Nashwan’s talented half-brother Nayef in his care.

Tregoning said: “It’s a sad day for us and everybody else connected with him. He was a great horse.”—AFP