Sprinter Sacre: a greatness undimmed by temporary return to ordinary life

He stands on the brow with the old oak behind him and the distant hills ringing the horizon. Sprinter Sacre is back at his summer home in Shropshire and no resting hero ever wore his greatness more proudly.

Out in the field many fine horses slip back to muddy ordinariness and – to take the line from Philip Larkin's poem At Grass – "stand anonymous again". But that won't ever happen with Sprinter Sacre – neither his physique nor his fame will allow it. Even after a full two months' holiday out in the paddocks of Juliet and David Minton's Mill House Stud just south of little old town of Much Wenlock, he looks anything but the big common slob some old chasers turn to in the summer. He looks big and bold and ready. And you only have to say his name. He is Sprinter Sacre.

Mind you, he wasn't when he first came here way back in February 2008. As David Minton loves to relate, he was just a big unbroken two-year-old, part of the legendary 20-horse "job lot" that 'Minty' and vet Buffy Shirley-Beavan were despatched at a day's notice to buy on behalf of the late Raymond Mould. "The truth is that he was just another good-looking young horse," says Juliet Minton as she looks across at the now famous arched neck and long pricked ears of our hero. "There were a mix of two-, three- and four-year-olds and I remember they were all nice horses."