It was the end of an era at Randwick on Saturday when former jockey and long-time trainer Bob Thomsen saddled up his last runners.Thomsen, who has prepared the likes of Group One winners Slight Chance, Danewin and Shogun Lodge during his 36 years training out of the on-course boxes, was recently asked to vacate his premises by the Australian Turf Club.His opinion of multiple Group One winner Shogun Lodge was such he named the Randwick stable after him.Thomsen declined the offer to relocate to bo

It was the end of an era at Randwick on Saturday when former jockey and long-time trainer Bob Thomsen saddled up his last runners.

Thomsen, who has prepared the likes of Group One winners Slight Chance, Danewin and Shogun Lodge during his 36 years training out of the on-course boxes, was recently asked to vacate his premises by the Australian Turf Club.

His opinion of multiple Group One winner Shogun Lodge was such he named the Randwick stable after him.

Thomsen declined the offer to relocate to boxes elsewhere on course, electing instead to pull the pin on a marvellous career.

Unfortunately for Thomsen, he didn't get a happy send-off.

He had two runners at Randwick and the first, Miss Upstart, broke down during the James H B Carr Stakes after suffering an upper hind leg fracture and died on the way to the Randwick Equine Centre.

His other runner, Danzig King, finished down the track in the Frank Packer Plate.

Christian Reith partnered Danzig King and said he had hoped to give Thomsen a more fitting end.

"I was hoping to send Bob Thomsen out on a winning note but it wasn't to be," Reith said.

Billy Davenport has been Thomsen's right-hand man since the outset, although with the trainer's numbers dwindling in recent years his role has been more one of moral support.

He named Slight Chance as one of the stable's best and said horses were always at the centre of Thomsen's focus.

"The horse's wellbeing was the basis of his whole operation," Davenport said.

"He had a lot of good ones. Slight Chance was one of the first real good ones. She won six Group Ones before the end of her three-year-old season," Davenport said.

"She was a great filly. And tough."

Thomsen will be remembered the same way.