As soon as Lucas Moura scored his winning goal in Amsterdam last month, it was obvious that this year’s Derby was going to have even more of a struggle than usual to grab the attention of the British sporting public. What with the big match in Madrid, the Cricket World Cup, a Brit in a heavyweight title fight and England women’s last warmup before the World Cup, Flat racing’s most famous race had a lot to contend with both before and after the event.
Inevitably, there were calls last week for Epsom, and racing as a whole, to have a serious think about moving back to a Wednesday Derby, a quarter of a century after the switch to Saturday. With equal inevitability, nothing will come of it – not this side of the end of Investec’s current sponsorship deal, at any rate, and that runs until 2026.
Nor should it. Twenty-five years on, plenty of the racegoers at Epsom on Saturday, both in the stands and on the famous Hill, were not old enough to remember Erhaab’s victory in the last Derby on a Wednesday. As someone who is, my strong recollection is that in the early 1990s, Derby day was visibly dying from one year to the next. The switch to Saturday gave it a huge boost and opened up the Derby to new potential audiences including families and workers who were unwilling, or unable, to take a day off in midweek.
And the evidence of Saturday’s race is that the Derby held its own quite well. It was a 36,000 sell-out, as it always is, in terms of the paid attendance, while the hottest day of the year also drew a bumper crowd to the Hill. Will it ever again be the teeming mass of humanity that it was 50 years ago? No. But many tens of thousands of spectators had an exciting and memorable afternoon in the sun and will, in all likelihood, be back again next year.
ITV’s peak viewing figure – ie. for the race itself – also held up well at 1.7m, just 2% down on last year, and a drop of nearly 15% on the average figure was almost certainly down to the weather. Most Britons no longer feel the need to be chained to the telly on a fine Saturday afternoon when they can follow the sporting action on their smartphone and get out in the sunshine too.
For many punters the only real disappointment on the afternoon was the sight of Telecaster, the 5-1 second-favourite on the back of his win in the Dante Stakes 16 days earlier, backpedalling rapidly halfway down the straight before crossing the line in last place.
Telecaster had, of course, been added to the field at last Monday’s supplementary stage for £85,000 along with Sir Dragonet, the Chester Vase winner, who clawed about half of it back by finishing fifth. Hughie Morrison, Telecaster’s trainer, was open about his concerns that his colt might not be over his exertions in the Dante while Telecaster’s connections were pondering whether to stump up the cash and the trainer’s fears, it seems, were justified.
This should be something that concerns both Epsom and York, as a 16-day gap between the Dante and the Derby is hardly unusual. Some years, depending on how early or late the first Saturday in June happens to be, it is 23 days, as it was in 2015 when Golden Horn was supplemented after winning the Dante and was an impressive winning favourite at Epsom.
The memory of Telecaster’s dismal showing off seven days’ less rest is likely to be one of the first images that comes to mind if, or when, connections of a Dante winner with a similar profile weigh up whether to pay for a supplementary entry. If the Derby is to maintain is status as the definitive test for a three-year-old, though, there needs to as much certainty as possible that the major trial winners will all be in the field.
It could be that the yearling entry system, with a huge late-entry fee for those colts either not entered initially or taken out subsequently, has run its course. At the very least, it could probably do with an overhaul to ensure that the Derby field remains as strong and competitive as possible. A cut in the supplementary fee is certainly worth thinking about, along with the introduction of ‘win-and-you’re-in’ status, which is currently in place only for Epsom’s Blue Riband Trial, for the other major trials at Lingfield, Chester and York.
Anthony Van Dyck may or may not turn out to be one of the better Derby winners and at this stage, he still has plenty to prove. The Derby itself, however, is for the most part as healthy as anyone could hope it to be as it heads towards its 250th running on 2 June 2029. That’s a Saturday.
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