A gay horse suffered heartbreak after his best friend had to be put down after falling during a race.
Simonsig and Triolo D’Arlene were both trained by Nicky Henderson and were both highly successful over the jumps.
However, both horses, who are geldings, were especially close spending all their spare time following each other around the field and eating together.
Triolo D’Alene, pictured here with Barry Geraghty was a special friend of fellow stablemate Simonsig until the horse’s untimely death
Simonsig, pictured following is victory during the Arlke in Cheltenham in March 2013
Triolo D’Alene was forced to retire in February aged 10 following a nasty injury at Kempton Park.
His best friend, Simonsig was put down following a fall in November 2016 in Cheltenham.
The story was first reported by Horse and Hound in November 2016.
When trainer Henderson sent his horses to a nearby stud farm over winter, the owners Charlie and Tracy Vigors noticed the close relationship between the two horses.
Henderson told the Washington Post: ‘We always have 10 horses in that field,” Henderson said this past summer. And that time there were very good horses in there. There was Bobs Worth, who won the [Cheltenham] Gold Cup, Finian’s [Rainbow], who had won the [Queen Mother] Champion Chase. I mean, they were some of the best horses in the country. And Simonsig and Triolo, and it must have been the next day, I went down to [the farm]. It’s only a quarter of an hour away. And I went over to see them, and there were eight bays, stood together.
‘I mean, it must be color. Had to be about color, didn’t it? Because the bays were all in a pack, and 500 yards away, on their own, were the gray [Simonsig] and the chestnut [Triolo D’Alene]. And they just spent the whole summer like that together.’
The pair of horses had an intense relationship despite being geldings.
After Simonsig had to be put down, Triolo only raced once more.
Mr Henderson, however, is skeptical whether the horse mourned his dead friend.
He added: ‘I don’t think — you can’t say he cried or he did anything like that; we were all doing that bit. You’d be making up stories if you said that [he mourned]. . . . I think you’d be making things up if you said that he didn’t eat for a week.’