Actions speak louder than words, and for all the talk about the importance of tomorrow’s 247th Betfred Epsom Derby the slipping status of the sport’s most famous race remains racing’s self-inflicted injury. No amount of gimmickry can turn it around.
The suitability of describing the presence of King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Epsom tomorrow as a gimmick might depend on your politics. But the Sport of Kings has always leaned into its royal links – and in trying to ratchet up popular attention, Epsom’s Jockey Club owners have no bigger trump card to play.
The urgency behind Charles and Camilla’s presence is such that they’re apparently going to hotfoot it to Epsom after a family wedding earlier in the day. Queen Elizabeth II’s love of the horses meant she’d have left any such duty in a heartbeat to be at Epsom. Her successor might have a more sceptical attitude to such multitasking.
It’s all a first step in a five-year Jockey Club plan to boost the Derby after a nadir of indifference in 2025. An official attendance of just 22,312 was there. Attendance at the Punchestown festival’s Ladies Day fixture a month ago was almost double that. The famous free-to-enter Hill was noticeably bald of spectators.
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It meant an event that once transfixed not just the sport, but the country, looked on its uppers. The result is all hands on deck for the promotion stakes.
As well as the headline-grabbing royal presence, various pricing measures have been introduced to encourage footfall. There will be music too. As appears to be racing’s default reaction, there’s also a prize money boost. The Derby is worth a record £2 million (about €2.3 million), although what relevance that has to casual racegoers on a day out is hard to measure.
Anyone with a shred of racing romance will wish the Epsom authorities well in drawing a crowd. Those of us attracted to the sport at least partly through the evocative Derby story will always be suckers for its history and tradition. But as part of the PR stuff, any rote sounding off about the Derby, and its role, being the same now as it was in the past does no one any good.
It has changed, not just as an event, but as the most important prize in the sport. It is no longer the race that shapes the breed. Godolphin’s ill-fated 2000 Guineas winner Ruling Court was taken out of last year’s Derby just a few hours before the race because ground conditions were a little more squelchy than ideal. The Derby didn’t matter enough to take a shot at it anyway.
Time was when such pragmatism would have been unthinkable. But time and fashion moves on. The sport itself has made sure of it. Pretending otherwise does everyone a disservice while undermining any real debate as to how the Derby’s status might be rejuvenated.
“We need to make the Derby the be all and end all, like the Kentucky Derby in the United States and the Melbourne Cup in Australia,” Epsom’s energetic general manager Jim Allen has declared. It’s a snappy line with little or no chance of being successfully followed through. The problem around such a statement was underlined just five days ago.
Constitution River lived up to his own billing as the most exciting of Aidan O’Brien’s three-year-old crop by overcoming a bad draw to win Sunday’s French Derby, leading home a superb clean sweep of the places for his trainer. The hard-headed move to run him in Chantilly’s shorter Prix Du Jockey Club rather than at Epsom spoke volumes about the Derby’s modern status.
That’s because the stamina required to win at the top level over a mile and a half is a commercial negative when it comes to that lucrative other side of the bloodstock coin in the breeding shed. Too many modern Derby winners have wound up in the jumps backwater. The 2020 winner Serpentine was the first Derby winner in a century to be gelded.
That’s ultimately the result of an industry that for decades has fixated on the commercial imperative of breeding speed. The paradox of how Coolmore Stud has been pivotal in that process while remaining the old race’s most important supporter defies easy storytelling. The consequence, though, is an unprecedented level of domination by a single operation.
It’s entirely possible to both laud O’Brien’s superb 11 Derby wins and point out how his supremacy is a competition negative. But that’s a symptom of a business trajectory that continues to swerve away from the Derby’s essential challenge: the capacity to carry class over a mile and a half. No amount of PR spin can deflect that.
The only meaningful solution is for the racing industry to restore value to its most famous race by once again making it the test that shapes the breed. That would require an unlikely commercial volte-face. Bigger longshots about it happening will line up at 4pm tomorrow, but sad to say not many.
Something for the weekend
Ryan Moore has won the Derby four times. He’s also picked incorrectly four times, including last year when Lambourn scored. It’s an occupational hazard of holding the most enviable job in racing as Ballydoyle number one. Benvenuto Cellin is his pick from Aidan O’Brien’s quartet this time. But it could allow Christophe Soumillon in to score a first English classic success on Pierre Bonnard (4.00).
Considering how O’Brien’s faith in City Of Troy and Auguste Rodin was vindicated at Epsom, it’s telling how he has persistently stuck with a script of two prep races setting up Pierre Bonnard for the Derby. Any ease in the ground will suit and Soumillon is unbeaten in two starts on the colt.
It’s more mundane stuff at Punchestown tomorrow, but Alan O’Sullivan’s 7lb claim could tip the balance the way of Da Capo Glory (2.25) in a Beginners’ Chase. He has four starts over fences, including a decent effort at Killarney last time.
