THE year 1977 was a very good year.

If you were an Irish kid, getting hooked by the racing bug, you were in your element.

The Minstrel won the Derby and ruled through that summer. The Derby duel between Carson and Piggott was a race to remember.

Alleged came along in his wake to win the Arc. Davy Lad won the Gold Cup for Mick O’Toole and Dessie Hughes, beating Tied Cottage and Tommy Carberry.

And at Aintree, Red Rum galloped like a fresh horse to claim his record-breaking third win in the Grand National and became a legend of the sport.

The term ‘legend’ is much misused these days but we now know that another legend was born that year.

There’s always a strange feeling when someone passes, and you can remember well that year they were born. So seeing ‘Pat Smullen: 1977-2020’ has a very strange feel to it. Taken so soon barely covers it.

We sadly know from experience that a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has long odds attached to it. But no one could have done more to fight it with such a positive outlook and desire to do good from the ill, that you even thought it possible he might win this battle too.

It’s a very unfair world when the great and the good are taken from us too soon.

But it’s because they were so that we will never forget them.

Emma Berry’s headline in the TDN perhaps summed it up best. ‘Class matched only by courage’. Perhaps we’ll put a racing spin on it for him – by Class out of Courage.

With the support of all in racing, he bore all the pain and never bowed to any displays of negativity.

Hearing tough, hardened professionals like Ruby and A.P. unable to control their emotions when paying tribute this week hit it home. It’s very hard to say the name Pat Smullen and think of it in the past tense. “Pat Smullen was ...”

There will be memorials aplenty, and all deserved – for all the bad publicity the sport has to suck up, racing never fails to honour its own. And never forgets those who gave so much so freely for the greater good.