The trainer of a Cheltenham Festival winner is mourning the loss of a horse she called ‘my best friend’. Grey mare Sine Nomine captured the St James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunters’ Chase at last year’s Cheltenham Festival.
She completed a famous double for her trainer Fiona Needham, who had won the race as an amateur jockey 22 years earlier on her father’s Last Option. Under Needham, who trains a small team of horses as well as performing the role of clerk of the course at Catterick, Sine Nomine was a prolific point-to-point winner and won four hunter chases.
She recorded her best and most recent victory when she defeated the JP McManus-owned favourite Its On The Line by three quarters of a length last March, under regular rider John Dawson.
The nine-year-old had been unable to add to her score this season and was pulled up at the Cheltenham Festival, after being kicked at the start.
She last ran at Stratford at the end of March in a handicap chase where she finished last of three, beaten under five lengths, but subsequently fell ill.
Needham told the Racing Post, “”She effectively got a thrombosis and then got sepsis, and it was all very horrible. The vets were brilliant and tried their hardest. Her last run was actually all right and then just a few days later this happened.
“They thought she wouldn’t make it through Saturday night, but she picked up again and was eating carrots before taking a turn for the worse on Sunday. She was a battler. I know she was a good horse, but she was such a character too.
“We’re such a small yard and I rode her out every day and she was a bit spoiled. It’s horrible. She was so full of life. I don’t have any children – my horses are my children and she was my best friend.”
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