RACING - Champion's LAST RUN

Northland trainers Donna Logan and Dean Logan were still reeling after one of their top performers Ring of Fire was destroyed yesterday after breaking a shoulder in training in Brisbane.
Ring of Fire, who was a five-year-old gelding by Anziyan, had raced 24 times for seven wins, two seconds and three thirds for stake earnings of $236,000.
His wins included the $50,000 New Zealand St Leger (2500m) for three- and four-year-olds at Trentham and the $A175,000 ($NZ197,000) Tattersall's Cup (2200m) at Eagle Farm in Brisbane.
Ring of Fire had not been placed in three recent Brisbane races, but the horse was being set for the $A200,000 Caloundra Cup (2400m) on the Sunshine Coast on June 30.
But it all came to a quick and tragic end when Ring of Fire pulled up in a training ride in Brisbane.
Dean Logan said the injury could not have come under much less pressure, but the result was a sad end for a horse he said was "one of a kind".
"Some horses just do the job and you never get attached but Ring of Fire was special and those horses don't come along too often," Dean Logan said. "He was an arrogant horse but really approachable as well."
The accident was a heavy burden Donna Logan carried while watching several of her horses perform at the Whangarei Racing Club meet at Ruakaka on Wednesday.
"It wasn't even a gallop. He was just cantering along and the shoulder went snap. It's like losing one of the family. I have truly experienced the highs and lows of racing. To carry that round for the day, made for a very long day," Donna said.
It isn't the first time the Logan Racing Stables have had to deal with significant injuries to their horses. Seven years back a horse called El Duce was invalidated after severing a tendon racing in the Singapore Gold Cup. It was an injury that almost saw El Duce put down. Instead the horse made a dramatic comeback and won several more big-money races.
There was no such comeback on the cards for Ring of Fire though. Getting the bad news on the phone from her business partner Dean was just the start of a difficult day for Donna at Ruakaka. Ring of Fire was owned by Henry Drinnan of Auckland and Logan said she took time to inform him first of the loss before informing others.
"He's very elderly and he lived for the horse," Donna Logan said of Drinnan. "My main concern was making sure Henry had one of his family with him when he was told. I didn't want him to hear it through the media."
Logan, who trains in partnership with Dean and business partner Chris Gibbs at Ruakaka, had 21 runners at the Ruakaka meeting and had two horses give exhibition gallops between races.
She took some consolation in her four wins especially when The Mooseisloose won the day's feature, a $30,000 race for two-year-olds.
That news was at least some consolation for Dean as well, who is based in Brisbane at present. The mission now was to try to see who the next star horse will be from the Logan stables.
"It is like sifting for gold, you never know where the next champion will come and when. A horse like Ring of Fire is a bit irreplaceable, but we have a lot of horses going well right now, so maybe there's another star coming through already," he said.