IT’S strange what a tragic occasion or sudden death can bring to the surface of your thoughts or imagination. On hearing of Walter Swinburn’s premature passing, it brought the words of Laurence Binyon’s war poem of remembrance - For The Fallen - to mind.

“They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old, age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.”

For that was how you remembered Walter Swinburn, the image will always be fixed around the 19-year-old fresh-faced kid on the white-faced bay colt on a June day. Even into middle age, the face never really showed the years of hardship. It changed little from the one that comes to mind from those schooldays of skipping Irish Inter Cert revision classes to watch Shergar win the Derby. And how he won it - with the cool-as-a-cucumber teenager on his back.

He probably never got the credit for Shahrastani’s win, the media preferring the story of the jockey who got it wrong rather than the one who got it right.

He was the second best jockey of my memory at Epsom, very much in the Lester Piggott mould, never in the wrong position when it mattered. Even if Michael Stoute persisted in running non-stayers in the Derby - Adjal, Shadeed, Ascot Knight, Doyoun - Walter always had his mount in the box seat, one out, one back, turning round Tattenham Corner. It’s a sad week in the light of Garrett Gomez passing and remembering Pat Eddery.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, and when the stalls open for the Epsom Derby, we will remember them.