Please don’t call it the Epsom Derby, as some have taken to doing. There are other Derbys — the Kentucky and Irish ones, for instance — but the third English classic of the year doesn’t and shouldn’t need the racecourse name to identify it.
First run in 1780, it is older than the United States of America for heaven’s sake. It is true, admittedly and sadly, that for quite some time now it has demeaned itself by bearing a sponsor’s name, but there it is: we live in a commercial age, not an aristocratic one. The present sponsor is Cazoo, a firm of car dealers.
However this year is different and Cazoo, to its credit, if also displaying commercial acumen, has agreed that the race will now be the Cazoo Derby (In Memory of Lester Piggott), thus honouring the greatest flat-race jockey anyone now living ever saw. One who won the Derby nine times, the first when he was only eighteen on Never Say Die in 1954, the last on Teenoso in 1983.
