When injury saw Yeats miss his date with destiny in the 2004 Vodafone Derby, it looked suspiciously like he could be another just runner consigned to the 'nearly' pile.
Three days shy of his trip to Epsom, where he would have been favourite, a recurring muscle problem saw Yeats head for the subs bench and leave Aidan O'Brien with only an outsider in the Classic.
How times have changed. Few could have expected the son of Sadler's Wells to bounce back and scale the heights of the staying sphere. It is fairytale stuff, even for a horse belonging to the mighty Coolmore machine.
O'Brien clearly had a plan, easing Yeats back into action in a moderate Curragh event before the then four-year-old stepped up to win the Coronation Cup at Epsom.
That victory very much sparked thoughts of what might have been a year earlier had the horse been fit, but O'Brien is not one to dwell on the past.
His schemes of another mile-and-a-half win that year came to nothing, but the decision to switch up markedly in distance saw Yeats come to the fore in an open-looking Gold Cup.
Making his seasonal bow, Yeats, under Kieren Fallon, stepped up to the plate to spectacularly fill the void in the long-distance division before going on to secure the Goodwood Cup just as easily later that season.
The Irish St Leger, a contest in which he had finished fourth the previous season, once again proved a bogey race, while the Melbourne Cup was too big an ask.
Some worried that trip Down Under may have left its mark on Yeats, but he shrugged off such concern with two wins in the build-up to last year's Gold Cup.
Yeats was once again to come alive at the Berkshire venue - this time with Mick Kinane in the plate - equalling the feats of Le Moss, Ardross, Gildoran and Royal Rebel as a dual winner of the race.
Better still was to come when he landed an elusive Irish St Leger victory and connections then set their sights set on a Gold Cup hat-trick only previously achieved by Sagaro in 1975, '76 and '77.
Yeats now joins him at a table for two in the stayers' hall of fame.
And not for this horse was there any scraping home. He did it in style, leaving Geordieland toiling in his wake as he showed his decisive extra gear to power away by five lengths and leave O'Brien - and Johnny Murtagh - with a smile as wide as the Irish Sea.
The master of Ballydoyle has smashed many a record and trained any amount of great horses. But he will do well to better his achievements with Yeats, who will be forever etched in Turf history. Gold Cup No.4 anybody?