Race days end for Mandesha, European champion

Mandesha, last year's champion 3-year-old filly in Europe, has been retired by her owner, Princess Zahra Aga Khan, after her seventh-place finish in Sunday's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

A Desert Style filly trained in France by Alain de Royer-Dupre, Mandesha won consecutive Group 1 races at three different distances last year. In order, they were the one-mile Prix d'Astarte, the 1 1/2-mile Prix Vermeille and the 1 1/4-mile Prix de l'Opera, all of them against older fillies and mares. This year she started off with a win in the 1 5/16-mile Group 2 Prix Corrida before finishing second in two Group 1's, the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and the Nassau Stakes and then the Group 2 Prix Foy.

Mandesha earned $975,946 in winning 6 of her 12 starts, one of them a first-place finish in the 1 1/8-mile Group 3 Prix Chloe from which she was disqualified.