Tributes paid to legendary horse and much loved member of RTE Racing's team

Irish Daily Mirror

26-06-2025

Tributes have been paid to one of the most popular horses of the past two decades — who has sadly passed away at the age of 21.
Gorgeous grey Thousand Stars was trained by Willie Mullins and won thirteen of his 80 races, four of them coming in Grade 1 company.
He earned over €1.4 million in prize money for his owners, the Hammer & Trowel Syndicate, who also owned legendary mare and record breaking six-time Cheltenham Festival heroine Quevega.
Indeed Thousand Stars' most memorable success came at the Cheltenham Festival in 2010 when he captured the County Hurdle under Katie Walsh.
It began a long and successful partnership with Walsh, the pair winning three times in total, while he also finished behind the legendary Hurricane Fly in Grade 1s on a number of occasions.
Following his retirement from racing Thousand Stars in 2016 became an important member of the raceday team for RTE.
He and Katie Walsh teamed up during the post-race interviews of jockeys when Walsh would be on board the grey.
Back in January Walsh spoke of their partnership on RTE with him saying: 'He's taken to that like a duck to water. He's like having another professional, he's such an easy horse to do anything with.'
He was also used by Horse Racing Ireland to showcase part of their retired racehorse activation programme with Walsh adding: 'He's got such a kind heart to humans and to other people around the yard with kids around. He loves attention and there's no mean to him. He's just a pleasure to have around the place.'
'Horses are like humans - you could have a good athlete who is not a very nice person. He just was a good racehorse and he's just a very nice horse as well.
His racing career and television career led to him becoming hugely popular and he was also a regular at the Dublin Horseshow in the RDS each year, where he competed on a number of occasions.
A number of people took to X (formally Twitter) to pay their tributes to Thousand Stars with one post saying 'Rest easy & thank you Thousand Stars.'
A post from @Racing_KLR read: 'Heartbroken to hear that @katiewalsh9 magnificent grey Thousand Stars has gone to the big track in heaven, he was a fav of my Mum, so she will get to see him again.'
Following Thousand Star's retirement in 2016, Walsh herself paid tribute by saying: 'He was just a favourite of everyone. I got to ride him in so many Grade 1s and the day I won the County Hurdle on him at Cheltenham was really special. It was like he had joined in halfway up the home straight and he won really well.
"I won a handicap hurdle on him in the fog at Fairyhouse one day and I suppose we thought he would probably be a decent handicapper. We never imagined he would end up being such a star.
'Everybody loves a grey and he seemed to capture the public's imagination. To be honest, he was probably unlucky to be around at the same time as Hurricane Fly and would have won even more races had Hurricane Fly not been around.'
He began his career in France and joined the Mullins team in 2009 and the last of his 80 races was at Tipperary in July 2016.
The son of Grey Risk was an important horse for Carlow trainer Mullins too in a period when his dominance wasn't as strong as it is today.
He said on his retirement: 'He was an iron horse. He was tough and sound. He never showed off at home. You would never see him do a flashy piece of work but he saved everything for the track. He was a favourite of everyone in the yard and had his own style of running.'