Last season’s European champion two-year-old Gewan was fatally injured in a racecourse gallop at Kempton on Thursday morning.

The Night Of Thunder colt won three of his four juvenile starts for trainer Andrew Balding, impressing on his Newbury debut before winning York’s Acomb Stakes and while he disappointed as hot favourite for Champagne Stakes at Doncaster, he bounced back to land the Dewhurst at Newmarket in October.

Gewan was as short as 6-1 for the Betfred 2000 Guineas over the Rowley Mile next month, but Balding said in a statement: “It is with extreme sadness that we report that Gewan, champion two-year-old of 2025, suffered a fatal accident whilst having a racecourse gallop at Kempton this morning. The vets were on site and attended to the horse immediately but sadly he could not be saved.

“Our thoughts are with Mr Harris Li and his family who owned Gewan, James Doyle who was riding the horse and is luckily uninjured and Marie Perrault who has looked after the horse since he arrived at Kingsclere and rides him every day.

“We will never forget his brilliance when taking the Dewhurst in such impressive style and we were so looking forward to seeing what he could achieve during his three-year-old career.

“Racing is full of high days and low days and unfortunately, this is very much one of the latter.”