Black Caviar was the only mare on the property that need not need an identification collar. Everyone knew who she was. When she developed mastitis – a bacterial infection of the milk ducts dangerous in horses as it often develops into laminitis – last week, she was rushed to Scone Veterinary Hospital. Mick Malone, the man who cared for her after she stopped racing, never left her side.

Malone and those closest to her are shattered at the loss of the great mare, who was like a member of his family.

“Because of the way their bodies are structured, they are on their feet for the better part of most of the day, and blood flow is critical to the foot,” Esplin said. “Laminitis is one of the most common ways animals die. You wouldn’t want any horse to suffer that condition.”

It was a desperately sad ending for Black Caviar. But she will be remembered for her perfect record on the track often overcoming injury, more often simply being the supreme athlete that couldn’t be matched.

Big winning margins showed the gulf in class between the mare and her top-class rivals, who would in turn go on to beat the rest by big margins once she retired.

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Hay List would win three times at group 1 level, including a weight-carrying record in the Newmarket, while Buffering took five group 1 races after Black Caviar bowed out, including an Al Quoz at Dubai.

She went from Melbourne to Sydney to Brisbane and Adelaide as she became a national treasure and kept winning, before her memorable conquest of Royal Ascot in 2012.

Her win in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes was the narrowest of her career but the runner-up that day, Moonlight Cloud, won five group 1 races, including her next start in France by five lengths. Black Caviar mightn’t have been at her best in front of Queen Elizabeth, but she willed herself to win.

“She saved me,” said jockey Luke Nolen, who had dropped his hands on her in the final climb to the finish.

Her best in Australia was devastating. It came on her first trip to Randwick for the TJ Smith 2011, where Hay List was waiting. His trainer, John McNair was convinced he had her measure.

“I got up that morning thinking, ‘This is going to be the day’. He was flying,” McNair said. “I have never had a horse close to him. I have never seen a horse like her.”

Hay List skipped four lengths clear coming up the Randwick rise and McNair’s vision seemed set to become reality – until the big mare started to chase.

“I felt her coming and heard the crowd roar, and then she just went past me and away from me,” jockey Glyn Schofield said. “I didn’t think that could happen the way Hay List was going.”

In her peak years, the nation stopped when Black Caviar ran. She was that special – one of a kind. Winx would come along a couple of years later and break some of her records, but she never had Black Caviar’s aura of invincibility.

“I don’t know how I would have coped if Winx had stayed unbeaten,” trainer Chris Waller once said. “It is pressure only Peter Moody and his team know.”

Moody probably summed it up best on her retirement. “She’s been a great shining light for our industry and my career,” he said. “[So] let’s stop now before something can go haywire.”

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