Former jockey Walter Swinburn, three-time Derby winner and the rider of Shergar, has died aged 55.

Swinburn, who friends say died peacefully at home, retired from riding in 2000 before becoming a trainer.

He was just 19 when he won the Derby on in 1981.

Swinburn also won the Derby on Shahrastani in 1986 and Lammtarra in 1995. Other big-race successes included the Oaks, 2,000 Guineas, 1,000 Guineas and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

He took over a training licence from his father-in-law, Peter Harris, in 2004 and went on to send out over 260 winners from his yard in Tring, Hertfordshire, before quitting in 2011.

He claimed one of the biggest victories of his training career earlier in 2011 when Julienas won the Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot.
Analysis

BBC racing correspondent Cornelius Lysaght

Walter Swinburn was one of the most supremely gifted and successful jockeys in flat racing during the 1980s and 1990s, winning a string of major prizes in Britain and across the world before retiring in 2000.

It was the major events that were his speciality and his confidence and nerves of steel in the saddle suited those occasions perfectly.

Aged just 19 and looking so youthful he was nicknamed 'the Choirboy', Swinburn steered Shergar to a Derby win in 1981 that was so easy that Peter Bromley, commentating on BBC radio, famously declared "you need a telescope to see the rest".

Though the stats say he won three Epsom Derbys, eight British Classics in all and much else besides, it'll be for Shergar that he'll be ever remembered - he was a highly significant part of one of racing's and sport's great stories.