30/09/2026

Varenne died during the night of 17 to 18 August 2026, aged 31, at the LJ breeding farm in Eboli (Salerno), where he had lived since 2025. According to the veterinarian, the cause was a sudden heart attack. Over his career he won more than €6 million in prize money, including the Italian Derby, two Prix d'Amérique and two Elitloppet.

In the days that followed, the racing world and much of the press remembered him as "the Captain", a happy champion who loved to run and to win. IHP reads that life in the opposite way.

From the track to the breeding shed

"They called you the Captain, the happy horse. They wrote that you loved to run, that you loved to win, that yours was a life fit for a king," said IHP president Sonny Richichi in a video released on the day of his death. "The truth is that you were the most profitable prisoner in history."

Once his racing career was over, Varenne became a breeding stallion. His semen was collected several times a week on a dummy mount, the standard procedure for artificial insemination, and shipped all over the world. He has more than two thousand registered offspring. None of them was conceived through natural mating, and the horse never saw a single one of them.

As he grew older, Varenne was moved from one farm to another: Vigone (Turin), Equicenter Monteleone (Pavia), the Il Cigno estate in Villanterio and finally Eboli. In IHP's view, these moves were driven by economic considerations rather than by the welfare of an ageing animal. Varenne was put on public display until his last months, as the symbol of an industry in crisis.

The story that hides the truth

The day after his death, his longtime driver Giampaolo Minnucci, as reported by Open, acknowledged that he may have given him "a few lashes of the whip he did not deserve". It is a rare admission, and it says more than many obituaries.

For IHP, Varenne's case shows with particular clarity a mechanism that affects thousands of less famous horses. The sentimental story of the champion hides the fact that a social animal, made to move in a herd across open spaces, spends its life in a stall, on the track and in the breeding shed. Its value is measured only in prize money and doses of semen.

"Today harness racing loses its greatest symbol," said Richichi. "We feel immense grief, mixed with a sense of liberation for him. Forgive us, because humans stole from you the dignity of simply being a horse."