THE Irish Champion Stakes rarely fails to deliver a season-defining storyline and unlike most history, the narrative is not always about the winner.

Whether it is Australia getting beaten at 3/10 in 2014, Frankie Dettori and Golden Horn wiping out Pat Smullen and Free Eagle in 2015 or St Mark’s Basilica hanging across Tarnawa in 2021, what happens to the beaten horses is often as engaging as the victors.