CHRISELLIAM, Europe's champion two-year-old filly of 2013, has had to be put down due to the effects of a foot infection.

It is a devastating blow to her Lambourn trainer Charlie Hills and her Gloucestershire-based owners, music mogul Chris Wright, from Coln Rogers, and former champion jockey Willie Carson whose stud is at Barnsley, near Cirencester.

Only last November, Wright, Carson and fellow part-owner Emily Asprey were celebrating a sensational win for their filly at Santa Anita in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies’ Turf.

Victory consolidated her position at the head of the ante-post betting market for the first Classic of the season, the Qipco 1000 guineas at Newmarket in May and helped her owners clinch the prestigious Cartier Horse of the Year prize in the two-year-old fillies’ category.

Chriselliam, who had won almost half a million pounds in prize money during her short career, had been under treatment for a poisoned off hind and it emerged last week that she had been transferred from her Lambourn stable to Newmarket Equine Hospital for closer supervision.

Hills told the Racing Post on Friday: "The vets were unable to get the infection under control with the antibiotics.

"She went up for surgery earlier today and they found the infection had spread and she had to be put down. It was progressing into the pedal bone. She has had the problem for a month and during that time every effort has been made to resolve it but unfortunately it was uncontrollable."

“She played a massive part of my training career so far.

"She was hugely talented, with a wonderful temperament. She never lost her appetite through the last month and was a fantastic patient, which is a tribute to her."

Wright, a lifelong racehorse owner and breeder, tweeted: "RIP Chriselliam. A true champion on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Only the good die young. By far the best we have ever had or will ever have."