The Derby isn’t quite what it was – a great national occasion
The Derby is older than the USA. It was first run in 1780 while the American War of Independence was still being fought. It’s not the oldest of the five Classics – the St Leger was staged in 1776, a few weeks after the signing of the American Declaration of Independence – but it is the most highly prized and may fairly be claimed as the most famous flat race in the world. Americans may bridle, and extol the Kentucky Derby, but a race on a level dirt track can’t reasonably be compared to one on the challenging turf of the Epsom Downs.
The Derby is, or was, more than a great race, more even than the best test of a thoroughbred over one-and–a-half miles. The qualification “or was” is, sadly necessary. Derby Day may still be the high spot of the Flat season, though one suspects that the Royal Ascot meeting at least rivals it. But it is no longer quite the great national occasion it used to be, even if it remains one of the two races in the year on which members of the public with almost no interest in racing will place a bet, the other being of course The Grand National. Yet even this may no longer be the case. Gambling is everywhere now, and there are fewer happily self-described housewives likely to see Derby Day as the occasion to have their annual flutter.
Nor is Derby Day the Londoners’ big day-out that it once was. There are no longer scenes like those portrayed in Frith’s famous Victorian painting. If jellied eels are still eaten at Epsom in Derby Day, it will be as an exercise in nostalgia. Time was that Parliament was adjourned on Derby Day, in the reasonable expectation that many MPs, perhaps even most of them, would have the good sense to choose to be at Epsom rather than at Westminster. Now of course the Derby is run on Saturday rather than on Wednesday, but if it was still in mid-week, any suggestion that MPs should have a day off so that they could go to the Derby would doubtless be met with absurdly self-righteous indignation; sad, really.
Indeed, one suspects that the switch made in 1995 from Wednesday to Saturday was itself a sign The Derby wasn’t quite what it had been, though doubtless it was called for by TV and sponsors. We’re now of course expected to call it the Investec Derby in public speech and writing, but I can’t think that anyone does so in conversation, just as we still speak of The Oval without appending the name of whoever is the ground’s current sponsor.
There are, even with regard to the sport itself, some reasons to think that The Derby has shed some of its lustre. It may indeed still be the best test of a three-year-old on account of the undulating nature of the course, with the stiff climb in the first furlongs and then the descent and left-handed turn at Tattenham Corner, but in recent years the field has been smaller than it used to be.
When Camelot, trained by Aidan O’Brien and ridden by his son Joseph, won in 2012, there were only nine starters, the smallest field for more than a hundred years. Of course, purists may not be dismayed. A small field makes “bad luck” stories less likely, makes it more likely that the best horse will win. It also makes the race less fun, and less of a spectacle. There were only 14 horses left in at the final declarations earlier this week, seven of them trained by Aidan O’Brien. O’Brien who has, it seems, an extraordinary empathy with horses, is surely the greatest trainer today. His domination takes some interest away from our Classic races; sometimes one thinks his horses might just as well be tested on his gallops at Ballydoyle. Once upon a time a trainer with two or more horses in a big race might have been suspected of being about to pull a fast one, not without reason. But, so far as I know, Aidan O’Brien’s integrity has never been questioned – not even though he invariably sports dark glasses.
For much of The Derby’s history winning owners were likely to belong to the landed aristocracy. The 5th Earl of Rosebery won the Derby twice in the eighteen months he was Prime Minister, and it’s a safe bet, in racing parlance “a sure thing”, that no Prime Minister will ever do that again. Rosebery was a Liberal and some of his Nonconformist supporters disapproved – those were the days, which continued until well into living memory, when The Manchester Guardian, as was, high-mindedly carried no racing news, neither race cards nor results.
Edward VII, whose mother like the MG disapproved of racing, won The Derby twice as Prince of Wales, and again as King, with Minoru in 1909. His devotion to the Turf did much for the popularity of the Crown and Royal Family. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth has won other Classics – the St Leger and The Oaks – but never The Derby. Her horse Aureole, a son of the Earl of Derby’s 1933 winner Hyperion, came second in her Coronation year. Popular disappointment was less than it might have been: the winner, Pinza, was ridden by Gordon Richards, champion jockey year after year, his first Derby win at the 26th attempt. So one fairy story came good even if the other didn’t.
Gordon Richards was like the great National Hunt jockey, AP McCoy, a man who rode more winners year after year after year than anyone had thought previously possible. Year after year too, the housewives bet on Gordon in The Derby and year after year had failed to collect. Some must have been happy in 1953 – if they hadn’t shown their loyalty to Her Majesty by backing Aureole rather than Pinza.
The next year the young Lester Piggott, still fresh-faced at nineteen won his first Derby on Never Say Die, an American-bred colt who had shown little previous form and started at 33-1. My mother backed him, I remember – probably had half-a-crown on each way. I don’t suppose any Derby horse ridden by Lester started at such long odds ever again. He would win the race eight more times, and one of his winners, Nijinsky, became the last horse to win the Triple Crown of the 2000 Guineas, Derby and St Leger. Shamefully few have even attempted this since, but Aidan O’Brien says that if his 2000 Guineas winner Saxon Warrior wins at Epsom he may well go to Doncaster for the St Leger. Since the oldest Classic is my favourite and the one that most requires a boost – because breeders tend to fight shy of Leger winners who have displayed stamina rather than sheer speed – I’m tempted to hope Saxon Warrior delivers the goods.
Nijinsky may have been the greatest of Lester’s Derby winners but is surely run close by Sir Ivor (1968). He had already won the Guineas but there was some doubt of his ability to stay the full mile and a half. But with Lester timing his run perfectly, he finished clear by a couple of lengths. Lester said he was the “easiest” of his Derby winners to ride. You can catch that Derby on YouTube and it is indeed the smoothest of performances. There was a fine cinema film too, entitled, “The Year of Sir Ivor”; he had gone on from Epsom to win the Champion Stakes and the Washington DC International at Laurel Park. He was trained by Vincent O’Brien, no relation of Aidan, though just as remarkable because he had already trained winners of the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National before turning his attention to the flat.
Racing and horses being what they are, even Lester had bad Derby experiences. One in what was only his first or second Derby was with a brilliant but high-mettled and moody fellow called Zucchero. Not sugar-sweet that day, he turned tail and refused to start. “Left at the post”, as they say; this was long before the days of starting-stalls. The next year or the one after, with Lester on board again, he won the Coronation Cup over the Derby course; one of racing’s many might have beens. As I remember, Lester once forgivingly included him among the ten best horses he had ridden. Years ago, my wife had one of Zucchero’s granddaughters, a sweet-tempered mare, nevertheless like him easily thrown into a panic, in her case by tractors, black plastic blowing in the wind, or blue tits dashing out of bushes under her nose.
As to today, if Saxon Warrior doesn’t notch up the second win on the way to a Triple Crown, traditionalists (like me) will be happy to see Hazapour win for the Aga Khan whose grandfather won three or four Derbies, the first in the 1930s; colours later famously carried to victory by poor Shergar. On the other hand, Bernard Kantor, founder and managing director of the sponsors Investec, will have the pleasure of presenting the winner’s trophy to himself if Young Rascal beats the field. Since Mr Kantor has apparently only five horses in training, victory for Young Rascal might be a blow struck on behalf of the small owner or little man, if the latter term can reasonably be applied to the boss of a company rich enough to sponsor the world’s greatest Flat race…