Miesque has been put down due to the infirmities of old age at Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky.  The darling of French racing in the 1980s was 27.

Miesque (Nureyev – Pasadoble by Prove Out) won 12 of her 16 career starts, including 10 Group 1 events.  She was the first horse to win consecutive runnings of a Breeders’ Cup event.

Bred and raced by shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos and trained by Francois Boutin, Miesque was France’s Champion 2YO in 1986.  She won on debut at Deauville, beat the colts in the Prix de la Salamandre and then signed off with a victory in the G1 Prix Marcel Boussac.

The following years she won the English and French 1000 Guineas and established herself on the international stage with a course-record victory in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Hollywood Park.

Miesque was champion again in 1988 after a record breaking repeat victory in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs.  Her record of 10 G1 wins resisted many challenges until Goldikova lifted it to a new mark last year.

As good as she was on the track, Miesque was equally successful as a broodmare.  Included among her offspring was an internationally influential sire Kingmambo and French champion East of the Moon plus the G2 winners Mingun and Miesque’s Son.

Miesque was inducted into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame in 1999 and was ranked 82nd on The Blood-Horse magazine’s “Top 100 Thoroughbred Racehorses of the 20th Century.”

“Miesque was part of our lives,” the Niarchos family said in a statement. “She was unique and gave us immense pleasure.”

Miesque is remembered by stakes races named in her honour at Maisons-Laffitte and Hollywood Park.