Kyprios has been hailed "the most incredible horse with a concrete mind" by Aidan O'Brien following the retirement of one of the greatest stayers of all time May 27.
A dual Gold Cup (G1) winner at Ascot, Kyprios won no fewer than 17 of his 21 starts, and you have to rewind all the way back to October 2023 to find his last defeat. He won his nine subsequent outings and finished his career on an official rating of 122, identical to the mighty Yeats, who won four Gold Cups.
The decision was made to call time on Kyprios's career due to an aggravation of an old ringbone lesion, picked up while winning the Saval Beg Stakes (G3) at Leopardstown for a third time this month.
Reflecting on a glorious career which started in September 2020 with victory in a Galway maiden, O'Brien said: "Kyprios was just the most incredible horse. Obviously, we had to be ultra-respectful of him. Always. When he was a little bit sore after his run at Leopardstown, we were always not going to take any risks with him. Everybody felt the same way."
Asked what made Kyprios such a sublime stayer, the master trainer replied: "It was his attitude combined with his ability to stay. Then, it was the class he had to go along with those things. He was an incredibly sound horse, and his mind was absolute concrete, too.
"He was laid-back all his life, that's the way he was naturally. Since day one, he's been like that, he just conserved all his energy."
There will inevitably be comparisons made to Yeats, the record-breaker who won two more Gold Cups than Kyprios managed, but O'Brien holds the son of Galileo in the same sort of esteem.
"Ah, yeah, he was a great horse," he answered, when it was put to him that Kyprios might be on a par with Yeats. "The class he had and his stamina. He had to be incredibly sound to come back from what he did.
"I don't think any other horse would have come back from where he came back from."
According to Racing Post Ratings, Kyprios's best display came in the 2022 Prix du Cadran (G1) on Arc weekend, a race he won by an astonishing 20 lengths despite drifting all the way across the track.
"The day he won the Cadran was something else," O'Brien said, adding: "Then the two Gold Cups were incredible. They were both great days, too."
