As most of our Seven Barrows string go off on their holidays, we say farewell to Premier Bond

Wed 16 May 2018

We visited Seven Barrows on Sunday with owners to see the string before most of them head off to grass and their summer holidays. It was our first opportunity to toast to Mr Henderson for being crowned Champion Trainer yet again! 

It was very sad though announcing that Premier Bond was to be retired. We owe him a debt of gratitude for the days and experiences he provided us all with. He was a wonderful horse to be involved with and he deserves an honourable retirement.

It was at the 2013 Tattersalls Ireland ‘Derby sale’ when we embarked on our National Hunt Racing adventure with Nicky Henderson. It was here that Tom, our National Hunt manager, acquired Premier Bond as our first store horse.

He switched to Steeplechasing last season and after making a promising debut at Doncaster, he won a novice race at Catterick and then back at Doncaster won again in impressive fashion. This led us into the Kim Muir at the Cheltenham Festival in which he ran a fantastic race to be 3rd, just beaten 1.5 lengths. This was an excellent performance and gave his Middleham Park supporters a very emotional day as you can see from the main image to this story. We then marched on to Ayr for the Scottish Grand National with high hopes and he went off favorite, but this just didn’t work out.

He won in all three disciplines; Bumper, Hurdles and Steeple-chasing and we wish him a very happy retirement, thanking him for some great memories that will remain with us all for a long while.