Ardross – “The Last Stayer Ever To Be Named Horse Of The Year”

Emma Berry – European Editor of Thoroughbred Daily News

Ardross competed in a truly golden era for stayers: from the treble Gold Cup hero Sagaro, Le Moss then preceded Ardross as a fellow dual winner of Royal Ascot’s greatest prize, with the latter pair engaging in an epic battle for the ‘Stayers’ Triple Crown’ of 1980. It is nigh on impossible to split these Titans of the 1970s and 80s, harder still to overcome our recent fondness for the likes of Yeats and Stradivarius, but try we must.

Ardross’s sheer body of work up to and including his six-year-old season is a thing of wonder: two Gold Cups, two Yorkshire Cups, the Doncaster Cup, Goodwood Cup, Prix Royal-Oak, Henry II Stakes, and Jockey Club Cup all feature among his 14 wins from 24 races across four seasons. But his stand-out achievement, surely, is the fact that he was the last stayer ever to be named Horse of the Year.”By the end of the 1982 season, Ardross had been granted a place at Beech House Stud, with Timeform, which awarded him a mark of 134, noting in the Racehorses annual of that year, “Few top performers retire to stud so thoroughly tried and tested as Ardross.