'I was stunned by the impact Bean's had on racing community - happy retirement!'

In the grand scheme of horses recently retired - Blackbeard, Baaeed and Stradivarius to name but three - you'd never assume a horse rated 64 at his peak would be a spectacle on a Saturday at Newmarket, yet here we are.

Bean, aka Caribbean Spring, at the grand old age of nine has had his racing shoes hung up.

We called time as he was diagnosed with arthritis in 2020 and the more protective and careful we can be now, the longer and happier life he'll lead when he's older.

Bean came to us in an abnormal way. He was purchased by a syndicate who disappeared when he arrived at the yard and, as such, he wasn't paid for at Tattersalls, and we didn't have 9,000gns to spend on a horse we didn't know.

We considered sending him back through the ring at the next sale but, in the time between him arriving and that next sale, we all fell in love with him and his chaotic character, and he showed so much at home in his gallops we thought perhaps we'd gotten a steal.

On his first run for us he was 12th of 15, and then he was sixth of eight. It wasn't the most promising start to his career with team Margarson but, naturally, Dad persevered and in 2017, two years after he arrived, he won for us and our apprentice Jane Elliott at Wolverhampton.

You'd have thought we'd won the Derby, and we all assumed we'd finally figured the quirky little horse out. Hilariously, however, Bean decided that was a one-off for the year and wasn't in the frame again for the rest of 2017.

In that time he'd changed riders a few times, between Jane, Mum and [sister] Katie, before it was decided I was the human for him, much to my dismay.

I'd seen him launch Mum and Jane into orbit, and I wasn't nearly the rider those two were. I had money on with everyone in the yard that I'd be eating dirt in days.

Rosie Margarson and Bean come back in after (a hopefully uneventful) exerciseCredit: Edward Whitaker

However, as so often is the case with Bean, he proved me completely wrong, kept me on board and in May 2018 he won two races on the bounce for Jane, who in the process lost her 5lb claim as he provided her with her 49th and 50th winners.

Jane has since started riding in America and much to her amusement, in her first month there, got asked if she knew Bean. Luckily for us Bean wasn't doing another over and out; after winning two he decided he quite enjoyed the pats and pride from the team and gifted me with my very first win on just my third ever ride and, in some form of poetry, my second win just a few days later.

It was a cold, wet week in November I will never forget, it still makes me smile now when I watch the races back; he showed himself up slightly in those two and proved when he wanted to win, he could.

He then took a deserved break and made us all wait until 2020, when he won for the final time for team Margarson. Until last Saturday, that is, when he 'won' at Newmarket on his final 'start', a bit like Pentland Hills at Huntingdon the following day!

There are some bragging rights for myself and Bean; we've graced Newmarket racecourse only twice, and the first time we beat Ryan Moore, and the second Tom Queally. I don't think we're allowed back.

All in all, the retirement of Bean wasn't something I envisaged having an impact on the racing community. He's a five-time winner (six if you count a charity race) whose race record reads like a confusing phone number, and yet when we arrived at Newmarket on Saturday, just before the last, I was stunned.

I knew how many people from his incredible Bean Club were coming and stupidly assumed that would be the lot, but I lost count of people in the crowd as we walked out and came in who said, 'Is that Bean?'

The impact this average little horse created just by being incredibly full of life and, quite frankly, bloody naughty is way beyond what I ever thought we'd achieve when I set up his Twitter account.

The daily insights will continue, to some people's joy and a few others' disgruntlement, and I hope to continue to spread the chaotic joy Bean brings by throwing me around.

Rosie Margarson is a bloodstock account executive at the Racing Post

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