HOW rum sport can be. You run along for year after year, always considered one of the best, one of the elite, always respected, always a little feared. But note that “one of”. You are part of the top group, but that is not the same as being the total, undisputed, No 1 boss man. Not the same thing at all.

Then, all of a sudden, you are in the form of your life. You go from very good to brilliant. Like Frank Lampard turning into Pelé, if you like, or like the old Andrew Flintoff turning into the new Andrew Flintoff. And that is the journey that has been taken by Andrew Hoy.

Good old Mr Reliable has turned, at a stroke, into Mr Unbeatable. At the age of 47, he stands on the absolute pinnacle of his sport, carrying all before him.

Last week he won the Kentucky four-star event. Yesterday he completed a flawless and mesmerising four days of competition by winning Badminton, in partnership with the stunning, coal-black Moonfleet. He came into the showjumping ring yesterday with two fences in hand and did not need either of them. That’s how champions do it.

He gave us a blinding clear, to go with his sublime round over the cross-country course the previous day. Add to that a dressage test that was lithe and supple and athletic and accurate and we have a champion who was simply untouchable. It was a glorious exhibition of an athlete at the absolute peak of his powers.

He has now won two of the three legs of the eventing grand slam. This was achieved three years ago by Pippa Funnell amid much marvelling and much talk that it was so extraordinary a feat we would be unlikely to see it done again.

Now all — all! — Hoy has to do is to win at Burghley in the autumn. We shall have to see if the fairy dust that has been sprinkled over the past couple of weeks manages to last that long. If it does, Rolex will give him $250,000 (about £135,000).

There are good, hard reasons for Hoy’s rise to dominance and perhaps the most important of these is love. In fact, my advice if you want to improve your dressage skills is to fall in love with a German.

You may recall that Bettina Hoy was presented with the individual gold medal at the Olympic Games in Athens but had it taken away after an error of procedure had been taken into account. That misfortune has not stopped her from being a first-class eventer and probably the best dressage rider and trainer in top-class eventing. Her input at the Hoys’ shared training establishment has given Andrew an edge he never had before. She has been riding Moonfleet in competition, getting him ready for his finest hour.

They are nice people to be around, so much so that I must tell the tale of the one time I have been around them. It was at Badminton in a previous year and the couple came into the press tent, Andrew in full riding gear. He was carrying a whip. Someone asked cheekily: “Is that for you to use on Bettina or does she use it on you?” Cue minxish smile and minxish German accent: “Actually, we both like it.”

There is also the eternal question of horsepower. You need to find the best horses and keep them fit and sound. This is a matter in which luck and skill are inextricably bound. One sure thing about the horsey life is that there are more things that can go wrong than anyone — including horse people — can possibly believe. But luck and skill have come together for Hoy and he has four or five very good horses at the same time, each capable of the highest things in the sport. And that’s truly lucky — and far from all of it is to do with luck.

The horsey sports rather specialise in bringing champions down to earth. Witness what happened to poor Funnell on Saturday. There are fences between the spectacular and photogenic ones, big and imposing enough for normal people, in all conscience, but in eventing they are generally known as “let-up fences”. And Funnell took a purler at one of these, the hay-wain — a former grand-slam winner bruised and shaken and roaring with fury. In all the horsey sports, the moral has to be: enjoy it while it lasts.

Hoy has been in the game long enough to know all about that, which makes this unexpected rise to total dominance all the more gorgeous. It has been, as Hoy always loves to emphasise, a shared adventure. It has put Hoy on top, but I think they both like it.