Altior

“I FELL in love with him as soon as I saw him, and I said, ‘We’re buying him, whatever happens, ’” National Hunt champion trainer Nicky Henderson says, recalling the moment that he and “Minty” (bloodstock agent David Minton) glimpsed the bay with the perfect diamond star and one white sock at the Goffs Land Rover Sales in 2013. “He was – and is – a good-looking horse, very athletic, with a good walk and a lot of presence.”

For €60,000 (“not cheap, but not stratospheric and in hindsight a bargain!”) the three-year-old that would become the recordbreaking Altior was theirs. On 13 September this year, Nicky announced the retirement of this “very, very special horse”. And what a ride it was in those intervening eight years.

There was logic and expertise to Nicky’s first look of love; Altior (it means “higher” in Latin) was sired by the Derby winner