Good answer? Ignore the question..... and then wonder why your sport is in crisis.... Is the point of the forum not to debate the issues? How do you expect your choice of sport to thrive when there are no heroes to latch on to....
The two sports within a sport are different. Flat racing produces stallions and those stallions that don't make it end up siring the national hunt breed who have no value other than the pure sport of it. If I had something of substantial value I would look after it. So I can completely understand why they are retiring him. If the racing public want to fund the diminution in his value if he got beaten next year, that would be something different. But he is very valuable so why bother other than for the pure sport (or stupidity) of it.