TRAINED by Aidan O’Brien for his racing career, he only won one of his first five races as a juvenile, but when he turned three and stepped up in trip, he cut loose.

He was beaten a short-head by his stable companion Bondi Beach in the Group 3 Curragh Cup on his three-year-old debut, but he won his other three races that year by an aggregate of 24 lengths.

When he won the Irish St Leger on his final run that season, he won it by 11 lengths. The only three-year-old in the race, he beat 10 older rivals, high-class stayers, and he had the race in the bag by the time they reached the top of the home straight. In so doing, he became the first three-year-old to win the Irish Leger since Vinnie Roe won the first of his four in 2001.

Order Of St George could have won two more Irish Legers himself, he was beaten a half a length by the enterprisingly-ridden Wicklow Brave in 2016 when he was sent off at 1/7, and he went back last year and won the race again by nine lengths.

He won the Gold Cup in 2016 and was beaten a short-head in the race in 2017. He won the British Champions Long Distance Cup last year, beating Torcedor and Stradivarius into second and third. He won the Irish St Leger Trial three times and he won the Saval Beg Stakes three times. He won 13 of his 25 races.

However, two of the finest runs of his career were in defeat: in the 2016 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and in the 2017 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. He finished third in the former, completing a famous one-two-three for his trainer, and he finished fourth in the latter.

There are not many horses who have the stamina to win a Group 1 Gold Cup over two and a half miles and the pace to finish third in an Arc de Triomphe over a mile and a half.

It is a pity that he will not be in the line-up for another Irish St Leger tomorrow, but Aidan O’Brien was very candid in his reasoning for not asking his horse to go to the well once more.

It’s nothing serious, the trainer said during the week. Age has caught up with him. We thought that it was the right thing to do for the horse.

Order Of St George is a son of Galileo out of the Gone West mare Another Storm, who won as a two-year-old in America, herself a daughter of Storm Song, winner of the Grade 1 Frizette Stakes and the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

You can be sure that he will be popular at stud.