Horse Racing: Time to Bury Wednesday Derby Debate for Good

Erhaab was not the best Derby winner of the last dozen years. Indeed, with all due respect to his connections, he was arguably the worst. He does retain one significant claim to fame, however, in that he was the last horse to win the Derby on a Wednesday, and it is a distinction that he seems certain to retain for many years to come.

Even a dozen years later, though, there is still an annual rumble of complaints that Saturday is the wrong day to run the premier Classic, and that Epsom's executives should be ashamed of themselves for abandoning the traditional date on the first Wednesday in June. A writer in the Racing Post even suggested recently that "it now seems to be generally accepted that the move to Saturday was a mistake".

If that means that this writer is in a minority of one, so be it, but the view from here is that far from being a mistake, the move to the weekend has been the Derby's salvation. The considerable struggle to get on a train at East Croydon at 10.45am last Saturday morning, and the sight of an infield with barely a square yard of unoccupied ground, further confirmed this opinion.

My first Derby - as a paying punter in the grandstand - was in 1987, when Reference Point and Steve Cauthen led throughout, and galloped clear in the final furlong to be met by a roar that weakened the knees. But this was probably the last Wednesday Derby with a proper audience. Suddenly, and without any obvious reason, the crowds dropped away, and by the time that Erhaab won just seven years later, there was enough space on the infield to stage a cricket match.

Those who long for a return to a Wednesday Derby seem to have forgotten that the public had clearly rejected it, and a Derby without its public is nothing, regardless of what the "professionals" might want or think. There was a palpable mood of terminal decline hanging over Epsom. It had ceased to be an event.

Now, the sense of occasion is back. To travel to Epsom on Derby Day is to feel that most of the world is heading there with you, and that those who are not wish that they were.

It is possible that those bleak years in the late 1980s and early 1990s were just a blip, and that the Derby would have found its feet again even on a Wednesday. There is no sure way to tell.

But it is just as likely that without the brave decision to move to the weekend, the downward spiral would have continued, and perhaps even accelerated.

One of the youngest racegoers on Saturday was, at an educated guess, around three weeks old. He was fast asleep as his mother pushed his pram into the grandstand, with a racecard sitting on top of his blanket. It was a reassuring sign that a race our nation has cherished for generations should now be safe for a few generations more.

Ron Cox's tip of the day


Buzzin'boyzee 3.00 Lingfield A high number near the stands rail can be an advantage on the straight course here when the ground is fast, and from the top stall in 18 of 18, Buzzin'boyzee can enjoy better luck than last time. This firm ground winner did well to finish fifth of 13 at Nottingham that day, as she was drawn on the 'wrong' side, and has enough early pace to make the most of her tidy stalls position here.