Sea The Stars stakes his claim as the all-time great without even breaking sweat

It was a season fit for a Hollywood script for Curragh trainer John Oxx, jockey Mick Kinane and Sea The Stars, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

POSSIBLY THE most remarkable feature of the 2009 racing year is that Sea The Stars became a true legend of the sport without ever showing how good he really was.

“Most intelligent horses use that intelligence to get out of doing the job. Sea The Stars used his brain in a positive manner. He always gave the impression that he was only doing just enough,” says the man who moulded one of the finest careers the old game has ever seen, John Oxx.

“He was a horse very aware of his own ability and treated the others with a bit of disdain because he knew he was better than them. So he just did enough: he was never going to be stupid enough to go and win by six lengths. It’s that that makes you go ‘gosh, how much was left in the tank’,” adds the trainer.

In terms of sporting greats, it’s hard to recall any figures who finished up not having left everything out there. Pele never had too many “what ifs” hanging over him. Neither did Bradman or Nicklaus or Spitz. And it’s that benchmark level we are talking about with Sea The Stars.

A unique season of six Group One victories, including an unprecedented hat-trick of the Guineas, Derby and Arc, gives the champion, bred in Ireland and trained and ridden by Irishmen, a singular place in world racing.

At the end of the most fantastic season any of us are ever likely to see, Sea The Stars is among the handful of horses that represent the seminal moments of the sport – Sea Bird, Nijinsky, Mill Reef. Plenty reckon he’s the best of all because whereas most of the legendary names of the pasts had chinks in their records, there is none in Sea The Stars’.

Oxx and jockey Mick Kinane have described him as the perfect racehorses and “the ultimate development of the thoroughbred species”.

Possessed of enough speed to land the Guineas at a mile and the stamina to win both the Derby and Arc at a mile and a half, with three victories in between at 10 furlongs, Sea The Stars also boasted an impeccable temperament, a remarkable constitution, and the looks and pedigree that make him the most coveted stallion prospect for generations.

As a package it doesn’t get better, and yet the suspicion remains that he didn’t even condescend to show us how good he really was. He didn’t have to. An unwillingness to win by too far saved reserves for what was a fantastic culmination in October’s Arc where he overcame trouble in running, and an unpromising position, to put the seal on his career.

As usual Sea The Stars passed the post at his ease, just two lengths clear. Kinane still suspects it could have been 10 if the horse had really stretched out. It’s that excellence that in the future will make Sea The Stars the enduring Irish sports story of 2009.

Ireland’s rugby team won a meritorious Grand Slam but does anyone really believe going into the next World Cup they will be rated anything but the best of the rest behind the three Southern Hemisphere teams? Kilkenny hurlers proved their excellence with another All-Ireland but by definition that’s a home party.

Sea The Stars has become a byword for excellence in a sport that spans the globe.

“He is the one horse I will always be associated with I suppose,” Oxx says with the understated poise that typified him during a thrilling but nerve-wrecking year. The 59-year-old Curragh native had already put champions like Sinndar, Ridgewood Pearl and Azamour through his hands. Sea The Stars, though, has been unique.

“It’s very hard to pick out one win over another but I suppose after the Derby we knew for certain we had something special,” Oxx remembers. “Mick got off the horse at Epsom and whispered to me ‘this is one of the greats’.”

Normally he’s very careful about what he says so that confirmed it for us. But we couldn’t say anything. The horse had to go and do it.” And he did it in a style that would have had Vincent O’Brien, Irish racing’s genius figure who died aged 92 the week before Epsom, purring. Aidan O’Brien had saddled the second, third, fourth and fifth at Epsom, but throughout the season he kept firing his best shots at Sea The Stars. They all came up short but there were moments when it must have seemed to the champion trainer that the great horse might be tantalisingly vulnerable.

The first was a furlong out in the Eclipse when Rip Van Winkle ranged up alongside Sea The Stars who had not got the run of the race. Vulnerability in this case, however, was illusory. Sea The Stars quickened again, leaving the impression that the pair of them could race around Sandown any number of times but Rip wouldn’t get past.

It was Mastercraftsman who actually got closest of all in August’s Juddmonte at York, making Kinane use his stick and running Sea The Stars to a length.

“That was more a visual thing. Mick took a pull on him and at the same time Johnny (Murtagh) kicked on his fella and caught our horse sleeping a bit. Mick had to get after him but it looked more of a struggle than it was,” Oxx recalls. “And he had a good blow so we knew he would improve for Leopardstown.”

The Irish Champion Stakes was Sea The Stars’ only start in Ireland in 2009 and after a stressful week leading up to the race with rain threatening to provide unsuitable ground conditions. The going improved just in time for him to run where he again faced the Irish Derby winner Fame And Glory as well as Mastercraftsman. “It would have been very hard not to run at Leopardstown. He was in top order going in,” says Oxx.

The response to Sea The Stars defeating Fame And Glory was memorable with a home crowd, that disappointingly only numbered nine thousand, making up for the lack of quantity with a feverish admiration that left no one in doubt about the unique place the colt in front of them was carving out.

It was in Paris that the seal was put on the legend. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is the culmination of the European season and crucially this time it was run on quick ground. That was ideal for Sea The Stars but this was no victory parade.

“The only disappointment for me was that there was no real pace. Horses do come from behind in the Arc but usually off a very strong pace. Very few do it after having pulled early as well and I don’t think anyone has ever seen a horse do it like this,” Oxx says. “If there had been the usual pace I think he could have broken the course record.”

From being trapped on the rail, Sea The Stars found himself in front in less than two hundred metres after a spurt of power and speed unparalleled since Dancing Brave 23 years earlier.

After that there was a brief flirtation with running in the Breeders’ Cup in America but instead the decision was taken to retire the super colt to the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud in Co Kildare.

Complaints about the finest performer Flat racing has possibly ever seen being rushed off to stud, instead of racing as a four-year-old, were inevitable.

Quite what the son of Cape Cross and Urban Sea had to gain from racing for another season is debatable, however. In financial terms, the decision was a no-brainer. Sea The Stars is a half-brother to Galileo, arguably currently the world’s most lucrative stallion.

And anyway the memories created during 2009 are indelible.