Mellon estate benefits British fund

The estate of Paul Mellon has donated $3.5 million to the British Horseracing Board's Rehabilitation of Racehorses Fund, it was reported on the Racing Post's website Thursday.

The Fund was created in 2000 to provide aid to the some of the 4,000 horses who leave racing each year in Britain. It currently has centers in Lancashire, East Sussex, and Devon. Plans are under discussion for a fourth center in Cheltenham.

Mellon, who died in 1999, was a noted Anglophile who had horses in training with Ian Balding, among them the great Mill Reef. In his will, he left $5 million to the a similar American organization, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.