Frankie’s back

Nothing has been lost since William Powell Frith painted his Derby Day panorama in 1858: today, instead of the carriages and corseted courtesans, the acrobats and pickpockets, he could cram his canvas with scarlet-lipped ladies in shades posing for selfies; with men in impeccable morning dress coping no better with greasy hamburgers than Ed Miliband did with his bacon sandwich; and with strolling musicians, from a moustached one-man band to the smartly co-ordinated Dukebox Singers, a sextet of ladies bravely striking up their acapella harmonies against the racing hubbub. But this year it really was all about the racing.

Only two men in horse-racing history have been instantly recognisable to the public inside and outside their sport, no second name required: one is Lester Piggott and the other Frankie Dettori. Fittingly, it was Lester, the winner of nine Derbies, who gave a surprisingly quiet Frankie, who had triumphed at Epsom only once before, the reassurance he needed before this year’s race: ‘I wish I was on your horse,’ the maestro told him. And if a kiss-spraying, shoutingly ebullient Dettori made up for his quietness before the contest by conducting the celebrating crowd afterwards with the exuberance of a whole pit-full of Barbirollis, then he deserved every minute of their adoration.

Because he is so chirpily irresistible and the best showman racing has, a one-man PR agency for the sport, we sometimes forget the quieter qualities this instinctive horseman can demonstrate in the saddle. Golden Horn’s owner, the astute owner-breeder Anthony Oppenheimer, had originally doubted he would last the Derby distance before gambling £75,000 on his late supplementary entry for the race. ‘Be cool, take your time,’ trainer John Gosden had told Frankie, the jockey he had, as a father figure, first helped to mould many years before.