Sceaux's owner pays tribute to Sacre Un De Sceaux's owner Colm O'Connell has paid tribute to Sprinter Sacre following the great chaser's retirement on Sunday. The Willie Mullins-trained Un De Sceaux was sent off an odds-on favourite to beat Nicky Henderson's popular star at Cheltenham in March, but came up short. When the pair met a month later at Sandown, Sprinter Sacre beat him even further, and O'Connell was star-struck. "Istabraq was always my favourite horse growing up but if I wasn't involved with Un De Sceaux, Sprinter Sacre would have surpassed him," said O'Connell, who owns Un De Sceaux with his father, Edward. "It was unbelievable that Nicky Henderson got him to come back three years after winning the Queen Mother to win another. "At the top of the hill he was being shoved along and you feared the worst, well his supporters did, but then he barged between us and Special Tiara and the race was over. "He was a savage horse. "I'm glad both horses went to Sandown as in the back of my mind I might have thought it was a fluke, but he beat us even easier there. "And to think last season was some 10lb below his best. Whoever came up with the nickname 'black aeroplane' was right, because he was. "You could take people racing who knew nothing, but if they saw him in the paddock they could pick him out because he just looked good. "We went to Cheltenham thinking we had a very good chance, but it's quite easy to deal with being beaten when Sprinter Sacre wins."
