Trainer Aidan O'Brien has described Camille Pissarro as an "extremely classy colt" following the shock retirement of the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby, G1) winner due to a hairline fracture in his fetlock.
The 3-year-old son of Wootton Bassett was last seen in action in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes (G1) July 5 at Sandown Park, where he touched an in-running low of 5-4 on the Betfair Exchange before finishing fourth to stablemate Delacroix.
Christophe Soumillion, who was in the saddle at Sandown, felt Camille Pissarro wasn't himself in the closing stages of that dramatic event and subsequent scans have shown that he suffered a career-ending injury.
O'Brien told the Racing Post: "He pulled off a shoe in the Eclipse and Christophe came in afterwards and said he was leaning left, that something was hurting him. He was sore in front after the race, too, so we had him x-rayed, but nothing came to light.
"We got him to undergo scans after that and they have shown that he has a hairline fracture in his fetlock so he has had to be retired."
Camille Pissarro ends his racing career with an official rating of 120. His finest hour arrived in the Prix du Jockey Club at Chantilly Racecourse in June, where an audacious Ryan Moore ride saw him sneak up the inside of stablemate Trinity College inside the final furlong and he went on to beat Cualificar by half a length.
He had finished third to another stablemate, Henri Matisse, in the Poule d'Essai des Poulains (French Two Thousand Guineas, G1) at ParisLongchamp before that and won the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere (G1) at the end of his 2-year-old career.
Camille Pissarro only won three of his 11 starts, but those were group 1s, and he amassed £1,138,646 in prize money.
Reflecting on his racing career, O'Brien said: "Camille Pissarro was an extremely classy colt; he had speed and class. He won the Lagardere on Arc weekend last year at 2 and then he showed everyone how good he was in the French Derby. He was very classy."
