The Derby 2019 – live!

If we are being honest with ourselves, today’s Investec Derby at Epsom is not even the biggest sporting fixture in the four-hour period between four o’clock and eight. Casual sports fans who tune in to the action will do so very briefly, as an appetiser before the main course in Madrid. It’s just the way it is.

Driving towards the famous track just before 10 this morning, however, it was still possible to sense that something special will be happening on the Surrey downs this afternoon. The fun fair is already in full swing, long lines of cars and streams of people are heading towards the course and from early morning, racegoers had been arriving to pitch marquees around the far side of the track, where they will see only the opening exchanges of today’s race.

That doesn’t matter, though. It’s being here that counts, just as it has for nearly 250 years. Tens of thousands of people are converging on Epsom, just as they did in the days when the only way to get here was on horseback, or Shanks’s Pony. And on a hot June afternoon like the one we have in prospect today, there really is no better place to be.

They can all hope too that they will head home later having backed a winner at a working person’s price. This is one of the more open renewals of the Derby in recent years, with no fewer than five of the 13 runners currently top-priced in single figures, while a couple more – including Circus Maximus, with yesterday’s Oaks-winning jockey Frankie Dettori aboard – are around 12-1. Bearing in mind that we had a 40-1 winner just two years ago who was, like all of Aidan O’Brien’s seven-strong team, bred to improve significantly for today’s test, it is difficult to rule out more than two or three with any confidence.

Racegoers arrive at a baking hot Epsom for Derby day.

Racegoers arrive at a baking hot Epsom for Derby day. Photograph: John Walton/PA

What is also encouraging, given the doubts about both Sir Dragonet and Telecaster being supplemented just a fortnight or so ago, is that all of the major Derby trial winners will be in today’s field. It is, after all, the race which was designed to find the colt with the ideal blend of speed, stamina, athleticism and courage to cope with this unique course and stamp himself as the leader of his generation and whichever of these horses is led into the winner’s enclosure this evening will have earned that status.

This will also be one of the hottest Derby afternoons for years, and the ground in the home straight is now officially good-to-firm, with the remainder of the track described as good. 3mm of water went onto the Derby course last night but that will scarcely account for the evaporation this morning and by the time of the big race at 4.30, it is fair to assume that it will be good-to-firm all over.

My colleague Chris Cook has tipped Telecaster for the Derby, and all the breaking news and results from the supporting races will be here as the day unfolds and one colt from a generation of many thousands stamps his name into history.

source: theguardian.com