Norton's Coin, who sprang one of the biggest shocks in racing history when winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1990, has died.

It is thought that the 20-year-old suffered a heart attack.

"I turned him out in a field, I went back to put some hay in the field and when I got there the poor old boy had died," owner/trainer Sirrell Griffiths of Carmarthen told the Racing Post.

"He was one of the family but we can't do much about it. It's a pity we can't all go the same way instead of suffering goodness knows what."

Norton's Coin entered racing folklore in 1990 when lifting the blue riband of chasing at odds of 100-1.

Breathing problems

He was running in the race solely because he had missed the entry deadline for a handicap at the meeting, and he set off for Cheltenham only after Griffiths had milked the cows on his west Wales farm early in the morning.

But Norton's Coin, ridden by Graham McCourt, defied his humble background to score a famous victory by three quarters of a length from Jenny Pitman's Tony Tobias, with odds-on favourite Desert Orchid only third.

The shock result cleaned out a number of bookmakers in the Carmarthen area.

Originally a successful point-to-pointer and hunter chaser, he won six races under rules all told, notably outsprinting top two-miler Waterloo Boy in the South Wales Showers Caradon Mira Silver Trophy back at Cheltenham in 1991.

He was retired in 1993 after an operation failed to cure problems with his breathing.