Pat Eddery will be missed in Sussex when he hangs up his boots at the end of the season.

The 11 times champion jockey, now aged 51, is easily the leading rider at the Glorious Goodwood Festival with 87 winners and his overall score on the Trundle Hill track stands at a staggering 268.

Eddery will create a void in John Dunlop's Castle Stables team at Arundel, where he has ridden 380 winners all over the world.

Dunlop said: "We will miss him and there's no obvious replacement."

Eddery has ridden the majority of Dunlop's horses since Willie Carson retired four years ago.

Dunlop said: "Pat first rode for me in September, 1973.

"The wonderful thing is that, as a young man 30 years ago, he was very polite and attentive to what he was told and he is exactly the same man today.

"He has never allowed himself to become over-familiar and yet he is a delightful person with great charm and, of course, a top-class jockey."

Dunlop has always tended to choose the best available jockey, while riders like Kieren Fallon and Frankie Dettori have agreements with Sir Michael Stoute and Godolphin.

After a year with Seamus McGrath in his native Ireland, Eddery joined Frenchie Nicholson at Cheltenham in 1967.

Nicholson and his wife Diana were renowned for producing young jockeys and taught them punctuality, good manners and how to ride.

The late Tony Murray and Walter Swinburn were two other graduates from the Nicholson academy.

Peter Walwyn, training at Lambourn, gave Eddery his first job after finishing his apprenticeship in 1973 and two years later Grundy's successes in the Irish Derby and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth put trainer and jockey in the world spotlight.

Eddery said: "Grundy will always be special for me because he was the first super-star horse I rode."

After eight years, Eddery was poached by the Irish wizard Vincent O'Brien, for whom he rode for five seasons.

Sadlers Wells, Golden Fleece, El Gran Senor and Lomond were some of the great horses he rode for the Ballydoyle Stable.

Eddery took over Dancing Brave after Greville Starkey managed to get the great horse beaten in the Derby and that was the start of another brilliant phase in Eddery's career.

The partnership won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. The colt's owner, Prince Khalid Abdullah, retained Pat for the next three years until 1994.

Since then he has been freelance. Eddery has ridden 100 winners or more in the United Kingdom in 27 of the last 29 years.

Until last year, when he was just one short of the century, the only failure came when he became champion jockey in Ireland in 1982 and had far fewer rides in England.

Apart from the Melbourne Cup and the Japan Cup, Eddery has ridden winners in all the world's great races.

He was on the first Breeders' Cup winner to be trained in England, when Pebbles won the 1985 Turf for Clive Brittain. He also won the Breeders' Cup Sprint on Sheikh Albadou for the late Alex Scott in 1991.

Pat's four Arc winners were Detroit in 1980, followed by Rainbow Quest, Dancing Brave and Trempolino in successive years from 1985.

He rode three Derby winners and so nearly made it five, when a close second on Silver Patriach in 1997 and The Great Gatsby three weeks ago.

He went on to win the St Leger, the final classic of the season, on Silver Patriach for John Dunlop, for whom he had taken the same race on Moon Madness in 1986.

To Eddery's total of 4,585, domestic winners (second only to Gordon Richards), must be added countless successes abroad. In Europe alone he has ridden 465 pattern race winners and said this week his remaining target is to add one more Group One success to the total.

How fitting it will be, then, if he can take Sunday's Grand Prix de Saint Cloud on Millenary for Dunlop. One of several Castle Stables' absentees from Royal Ascot because of the firm ground, Millenary won over the course and distance last month, only to lose the race in the stewards' room.

Eddery said: "Even if I do ride a Group One winner I will carry on to the season's end because I ride so many for Mr Dunlop and I think I should fulfill that obligation until the end of the year."

That is the sort of old-fashioned loyalty appreciated by Dunlop and is what one of racing's great partnerships has been based upon.

When Pat does finally retire, perhaps he will make, believe it or not, his first-ever visit to Castle Stables at Arundel.