Leading British Trainer Philip Hobbs expressed his sadness on Wednesday afternoon as it was revealed that his chaser War Sound had passed away after a battle with colic.
The 11 year old son of Kayf Tara passed away due to the illness after having a decent 23 race career where his biggest scalps were when winning the 2015 Swinton Hurdle at Haydock and an £80,000 chase at Aintree in 2018.
(Credit Racing Post) Philip Hobbs said on Wednesday: "It's very sad – he died of colic yesterday. He's been a great horse for a long time.
"I suppose at times he was a little bit disappointing but those two wins, in the Swinton and in a valuable race at Liverpool, were very good."
War Sound wins at @AintreeRaces for Tom O'Brien and @PJHobbs1 pic.twitter.com/YGeFAnYSsA
— ITV Racing (@itvracing) November 10, 2018
War Sound's owners Tony and Beth England and Adrian and Andrew Heywood fortunately have Thyme Hill to fall back on and look ahead to the future with after landing the Grade One Challow Hurdle last season and a narrow fourth in the Albert Bartlett at Cheltenham.
"It's very likely he'll stay over hurdles with the Stayers' Hurdle in mind," Hobbs said.
"He's schooled very well over fences but I think we'll delay chasing for 12 months.
"He's been getting better with each run over hurdles and he was possibly unlucky at Cheltenham.
"We thought long and hard about what trip we were going to run him over at Cheltenham but unless the ground was desperate we were going to go up to three miles and as it turned out he was staying on extremely well, he just got stopped twice at the wrong time."