SUNDAY marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Arkle, undoubtedly the greatest steeplechaser of all time.

Trained by Tom Dreaper for the Duchess of Westminster, the three-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner had his final start in the 1966 King George VI Chase at Kempton, a race in which he suffered a fractured pedal bone and was beaten into second spot.

Arkle superfan and racing memorabilia collector Nick O’Toole takes up the story: “They tried to put him back into training in the autumn of 1968 but he never showed the same sparkle and he was retired to his owner’s farm in Bryanstown, Co Kildare.”

Rheumatism had set in and this developed into arthritis. On May 31st 1970 veterinary surgeon Maxie Cosgrove found that the great horse was unable to stand. It was Cosgrove’s assistant James Kavanagh who stepped forward with the syringe to put Arkle out of pain.

The horse was buried at Bryanstown but was later exhumed and his skeleton put on display at the Irish National Stud, where it remains today.

“Arkle was a legend in his time and he became an icon,” said Nick this week. “He had a Timeform rating of 212. His stable companion Flyingbolt was rated 210 and the nearest any horse has come to that was Sprinter Sacre, who was rated 192p.

“Some people say Arkle’s rating was too high. To them, I would say ‘look at the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup’. Arkle carried 12st 7lb in that race, he gave 16lb to Mill House, the second best chaser at the time, and Arkle beat him by 20 lengths.”

According to Nick, Arkle remains “one of Ireland’s greatest sporting ambassadors” and two documentaries have been made about the horse. Arkle – The Legend Lives On was made by Touchline Media and won an IFTA, defeating two GAA-based programmes and a film about a certain MMA fighter “who was respectable at the time”.

Fifty years on and Arkle’s legacy has never dimmed. Himself. Still the greatest of all time.