The dead-eye of an assassin: Rachael Blackmore's strokes of genius in the saddle that defined an epic career

Distilling the defining moments of a truly epic career down to a few individual chapters hardly does justice to the seminal body of work Rachael Blackmore cultivated. 

What she achieved amounted to so much more than a nerveless ride here or there on the big stage, and positioning herself to be considered a viable option for those marquee occasions was her first and most consequential success. However, she then took those chances with an assassin's dead-eyed ruthlessness, seizing the opportunities she had worked so hard to win with a combination of race-riding guile, nerves of steel and a fierce will to win that belied her demure demeanour. 

In sticking to three of her most exquisite turns, there is a raft of similarly worthy candidates left out, but the chosen ones had in common a palpable level of expectation. When the chips were down in the marquee events, each of these at Cheltenham in March, Blackmore came into her own. That loose criteria means her poised effort on Minella Times in the Grand National loses out, along with plenty others.