HORSERACING'S place within the British sporting firmament is not as prominent as its advocates would like to believe. As much is plain from the resonance generated by racing's equine torch-bearers.
Ask 100 people on the street to name one horse they'd heard of and it's likely Shergar would come to the fore. Yet that has less to do with his record-breaking 1981 Derby triumph as his subsequent abduction by kidnappers.
That litmus also works in reverse. Horses making headlines solely within a racing context are quickly forgotten. Ten years on from his retirement and it's surprising how few people have heard of Frankel. And if you asked the uninitiated to name an outstanding hurdler, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone advancing the cause of Night Nurse.
Night Nurse was not just an outstanding hurdler. According to Timeform, the esteemed assessor of racehorse merit since 1948, he was the best hurdler of all time.
His backstory is almost as compelling as that of Red Rum, whose Grand National triumph in 1977 robbed Night Nurse of the acclaim he warranted on that epic afternoon at Aintree. Night Nurse somehow forced a dead heat with Monksfield in the Templegate Hurdle when conceding that foe 6lb. It was a remarkable tour de force from Night Nurse, full of thunder and defiance after he'd made mistakes at
