This Years Epsom Derby by Cornelius Lysaght
By Cornelius Lysaght
Clearly a poignant cloud hangs over the 243rd Derby, taking place just a few days after the death of Lester Piggott.
His total of nine wins in the premier Classic race – from Never Say Die in 1954 to Teenoso a remarkable 29 years later, via Sir Ivor (1968), Nijinsky (1970) and more – is not only a record but a pretty astonishing one when you consider the most successful riders in the line-up in 2022, Ryan Moore and Frankie Dettori, both modern-day legends, have won ‘just’ two each.
The so-called ‘Long Fellow’ was a 15-year-old when competing in the race for the first time in 1951, on Zucchero, and was aged 58 when fifth-placed Khamaseen was his final mount in 1994.
It is no vague exaggeration to say he is as much part of Epsom’s rich heritage as the 12th Earl of Derby (who gave his family name to the race in 1780) or more recently Shergar, the 1981 winner infamously kidnapped from stud two years later and never seen again.
While race-riding, such was Piggott’s standing that in the weeks leading up to Epsom everyone seemed to want to know “What’s Lester on?” – though that could always change if he carried out one of his ruthless last-minute ‘jockings off’ of a rival jockey.
Since retirement, apart from the year of a prison sentence for tax evasion, he has been a welcome regular on Derby day, uttering a few dry gems to admirers in those much-imitated but barely audible tones for which he was renowned.
It will all seem strange without Lester but, just like 2013 when Sir Henry Cecil died the week prior to his beloved Royal Ascot, there will be a feeling that here is a wonderful opportunity to honour a well-lived life around an event special to him.
2022 sees a Derby and an Oaks – a race in which Piggott scored a half-dozen victories – that contain many of the thrilling ingredients that have made them such a draw for so many over the centuries.
The Irish-based Coolmore racing and thoroughbred breeding empire, a stalwart without which the Epsom Classics might have struggled to maintain their lofty status over the last twenty years, and rival superpower Godolphin, which has been particularly strong in recent Derbys with Masar and Adayar, are both well represented once again.
But the pair’s stranglehold is nowhere near guaranteed in a year when the two-day fixture, which also features the Group One Coronation Cup for older horses, will be under a sharper focus than usual as a central plank of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
And while we all doff our hats to the prolific slickness of Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore and Charlie Appleby and Godolphin, the possibility that Sir Michael Stoute, 76, a superpower of yesteryear, could grab back the Cazoo Derby limelight with the Dante Stakes winner Desert Crown, a second ride in the Classic for jockey Richard Kingscote, is rather delicious.
Desert Crown, which attempts to give the trainer of Shergar a sixth success in all but first since Workforce in 2010, ticks a multitude of boxes and would provide a popular success, nor least with the Queen who is an owner at Stoute HQ.
In the Oaks, Royal trainers, and near-neighbours of Sir Michael in Newmarket, John and Thady Gosden have two runners with outstanding credentials; Frankie Dettori is aboard the unbeaten Musidora Stakes winner Emily Upjohn, but the progressive Nashwa should really relish the extra distance she faces with Hollie Doyle riding.
And as though having Michael Stoute with the Derby favourite again was not enough for us sentimentalists, Steve Cauthen, the American who was such a jockey-hero in the 1970s, 80s and 90s is back at Epsom where he won two Derbys and the Oaks three times – all for Henry Cecil – as a pundit on ITV. Unbelievably he is now 62.
So much to savour: Lester would have loved it.