TIPPING POINT:SOMETIMES NAMES become synonymous with a sport, their rhythms and cadences capturing an essential excitement, provoking images of the very best of something. Said in a Welsh accent, Barry John still generates a slink-hipped, jinking rugby romanticism that not even the most grizzled secondrow hard-man can spoil.

In golf, it’s not corporate-friendly “Tiger” that produces the romance, although it is better than Eldrick. Instead it remains Seve, a real name given to a real charismatic figure who occasionally managed to make even the member-game appear exciting.

Of course, having a distinctive handle helps. Jonny Wilkinson is as desperately ordinary as Barry John isn’t. Seve was never going to be confused with Nick Price. Lester Piggott is sufficiently different a “moniker” to make even those with only the scantiest knowledge of the racing game conjure up an instant picture.

But of the horses, there is one name that even now epitomises the popular image of we expect a great thoroughbred to be. And it’s not Red Rum, Desert Orchid, Arkle, or any of the legendary jumpers that resonate outside of racing’s parish. It is Nijinsky, the highly strung yet physically magnificent specimen that combined fragility with a hauteur that could make even the most powerful human feel just that little bit more insignificant.

Of course the back story helped. Vaslav Nijinsky was a schizophrenic Russian who considered himself Polish, spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, and who for a few years leading up to the Great War, was also considered the most exciting ballet dancer the world had ever seen.

Those who saw him marvelled at the style, grace and hint of dangerous unpredictability that later seemed to chime perfectly with his deathbed prediction he would be reincarnated as a thoroughbred racehorse. It also helped that for much of his career, Nijinsky II was all but unbeatable. This week, 42 years ago, he completed the English Triple Crown of 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St Leger, the first in 35 years, just the seventh in the 20th century.

It sealed his legend, defined Nijinsky as the last “Triple Crown Champion,” a tag worthy of his name. Even a pair of defeats in his last two races couldn’t knock his status and he remains an almost mythical figure, still the most evocative name to emerge from Vincent O’Brien’s Ballydoyle stables.

A different O’Brien trains there now. With the backing of Coolmore Stud’s all-but-limitless resources, Aidan O’Brien is reconfiguring racing’s statistical records. Since those records stretch back nearly 300 years, the scale of this is not inconsiderable.

But even so, there will be a sense of history around this Saturday’s St Leger at Doncaster that confounds any statistic, even the one about O’Brien clean-sweeping all five English classics in 2012 if he comes out on top.

For the first time since Nijinsky in 1970, a horse has the Triple Crown in his sights and that his name is Camelot is so ideal many will view it as near-destiny he will follow in the footsteps of the legendary figure, a statue of which dominates the entrance to the Ballydoyle yard which has been home to both.

The echoes don’t end there. Nijinsky arrived at Doncaster unbeaten in 10 starts. Camelot has had just five. But he too remains unbeaten, having been top class as a juvenile and adding an Irish Derby victory to successes at Newmarket and Epsom.

Unlike Nijinsky, Camelot has yet to race against older horses, continually beating up a crop of fellow three-year-olds that by common consent are remarkable only for their comparative ordinariness.

That Camelot faces more of them at the weekend will do little to deflect sceptics who have dismissed the son of the late-Montjeu as easily the best of a very bad lot.

Certainly, until he is allowed break out of his own age-group, doubts will remain over O’Brien’s recent assertion that Camelot is the “most incredible horse we’ve had since we started”. Since a decade and a half of continuous O’Brien success at Ballydoyle includes horses of the calibre of Galileo, High Chaparral and Rock of Gibraltar, the suspicion lingers the champion trainer might be indulging in the sort of sales talk that will look good on brochures advertising Camelot’s inevitable future career as a stallion.

Camelot’s record in cold, hard form terms might be a long way from Fellini’s definition of hype as a desperate attempt to convince somebody to review one of his films but it would be foolish to bloat it into something it isn’t.

And even completing the Triple Crown won’t alter that. In many ways his preparation for Doncaster can be construed as a way of steering clear of the older superstar Frankel while receiving the kudos of reigniting the Leger as a race still relevant to top-class international racing.

Even by the time Nijinsky won at Doncaster, the old adage about the fastest horse winning the Guineas, the luckiest horse the Derby and the best horse the Leger looked obsolete. Now it seems a relic of another time, when limited alternatives forced a trip to Yorkshire in the absence of anything else.

In the high-finance world of international bloodstock, it is speed that sells, not the stamina required to slog out an extended mile and three quarters. That applied in Nijinsky’s day, and to the power of a hundred now. Both Nashwan in 1990 and Sea the Stars three years ago had a Triple Crown in their sights and the Leger never figured in their career path. Instead, both were prepared for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Nijinsky got beaten in his Arc. Plenty blamed a tough race in the Leger for that, rendering the world’s oldest classic even more unfashionable. But then, and now, fashion doesn’t deflect from the essential challenge. Nijinsky and Piggott made it look easy at Doncaster but appearances can be deceptive and the jockey admitted afterwards the great horse hadn’t much left in the tank.

That’s the thing with the Leger. There’s no shirking the demands it places on resolution and stamina. Even raw class can’t compensate if there’s a deficiency in those more prosaic requirements. Shergar could finish only fourth in the Leger. Alleged got beaten too, and he subsequently won two Arcs. Once the field swings into the straight, there’s still a daunting half a mile to go. And on soft ground, every yard of it is felt even more.

At some stage this week, the comparison to another famous name – Usain Bolt being asked to beat his contemporaries over say 200 metres, 400 and 800 – will almost certainly be used to quantify the challenge facing Camelot. It’s a mostly spurious comparison. The human requirements for such a feat are too diverse. They nearly are for a thoroughbred too, but not completely so.

Whatever the logic behind Camelot attempting the Triple Crown – and the fact he races in the colours of Derrick Smith, a former director of Ladbrokes who happens to sponsor the Leger, may not be irrelevant either – the fact remains there is almost nothing commercial or financial to be gained by this horse winning on Saturday.

Instead, it’s a shot at a purely romantic tag – “Triple Crown Winner.” And who can argue with a little bit more romance in the world.