Jumps horse of the decade: 'He had the look of an eagle and heart of a lion'

There are some horses who win our awestruck admiration for the sheer sparkling quality of their performances on the track, and there are others who earn our undying love for a gnarly, never-say-die attitude that carries them way beyond their physical limitations.

It's rare for a horse to meld the two, to prove itself as a silky smooth athlete with the pugnacious spirit of a street fighter, a shining star with a seam of grit running through the middle, but in Sprinter Sacre we unearthed just that. Throughout his career he showed his 'class', landing a string of glittering prizes in the process; but in the second phase of his life, when the going got genuinely tough and he needed something more than raw ability to get the job done, he dug deep to find the kind of will that few possess.

In a nutshell, through adversity he became the complete racehorse, and those who knew him best still marvel at his greatness.