BERTRAM Allen announced the retirement of Romanov, his “horse of a lifetime” earlier this week. The 19-year-old chesnut stallion was last seen in competitive action at the Global Champions League in Doha last November, when Allen and his teammate John Whitaker were crowned champions. Romonov (Heartbreaker x Fedor) was bred in The Netherlands by Gebr Bosch and produced by Britain’s Philip Spivey as a youngster. In 2005, as a seven-year-old, Romanov won the Foxhunter Championship at the Horse of the Year Show in Birmingham before going on to represent Great Britain on the winning Nations Cup teams at Lisbon and Linz.