So Aidan and the boys won the Betfred-sponsored Coronation Cup, Oaks and Derby last weekend, picking up around £1.5 million in the process, writes Tony Stafford. Lambourn, the well-backed third favourite on Derby Day, far out-performed his much more talked-about stable companions The Lion In Winter and short-priced favourite Delacroix in almost a repetition of Serpentine’s all-the-way easy victory under Emmet McNamara at the height of Covid five years ago.

Ryan Moore had selected Delacroix from the gang of trials winners rather than Chester Vase hero Lambourn and, in retrospect, it was maybe a little strange as Aidan always sends his best candidates to Chester, its timing best suiting Epsom.

People may question the suitability of a one-mile always-turning circuit as a recipe for revealing Epsom Classic talent, but I know Henry Cecil always reckoned that a big horse would be fine around the Roodeye if he was well-balanced. Lambourn certainly is.

He was picked up almost by default by Wayne Lordan, the apparent third string – Colin Keane, the regular Irish champion was on Dante flop The Lion In Winter. But the stamina Lambourn showed in winning the Chester Vase (just beyond 1m4f) last month convinced Wayne to go hard in the first furlong out of the stalls – to wake his mount up as much as anything – as he knew, unlike many in the field, his mount would not fail through lack of staying power.

Auguste Rodin (2023) and City Of Troy last year were fully expected winners but two other runnings in the last decade have gone to perceived third or higher strings. Wings Of Eagle, the fifth choice in terms of expectations in 2017 was a 40/1 shot when Padraig Beggy guided him home.

Beggy has been rarely seen since on the racecourse, but he did return to Epsom two years later to partner outsider Sovereign as a pacemaker in the Derby and finished tenth. He then rode him as a 25/1 outsider in the Irish Derby and won it!

McNamara might not have seen much riding action after Serpentine’s triumph, but it’s hardly surprising as he had been combining his riding with studying at Griffith College, Dublin. He graduated from there in 2018 with first-class honours in accountancy and finance in 2018 and works in that capacity in the Coolmore operation. Talk about top-class staff!

Moved across to Ballydoyle when David Wachman, John Magnier’s son-in-law, stopped training to take a behind the scenes role in the Coolmore machine, Lordan was third string to Ryan Moore and Seamie Heffernan until that veteran left the team a couple of years or so ago.

Lordan, one of those outdated characters, a true lightweight, had a serious injury during the 2023 Irish Derby which took eight months to overcome. As he said after Saturday’s triumph, he has a wonderful job. It was only a neck that denied him the Oaks-Derby double when Moore’s mount Minnie Hauk just edged out he and Whirl after another flawless front-running ride around Epsom’s tricky 1m4f course the previous afternoon, showing what jewels are available to the Coolmore number two on which to demonstrate his skills.

The modest Mr Lordan affirmed that he will have been in for work at 7 a.m. as usual yesterday and after no drunken celebratory stupor. Like the trainer he’s a teetotaller.

Aidan O’Brien has now won the Derby and Oaks eleven times each and, for good measure, ten Coronation Cups after Friday’s determined triumph for Jan Brueghel over the odds-on French four-year-old Calandagan. The Francis-Henri Graffard-trained horse was adding to his string of half-hearted second places (now four in a row) behind a typically tough O’Brien stayer.

In all, it’s 47 UK Classics from the 139 that have been contested since his first winning attempt in the 1,000 Guineas in 1998. That’s around 33 per cent. At least everyone else has been able to share the remaining two-thirds although, as time goes on, the dominance if anything is strengthening.

Aidan’s 22 Epsom Classics have all come this century, thus 22 of the 52 to have been run, or 42%! When Michael Tabor and Mrs Sue Magnier add their joint win with the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi, they are on 12.

To add to the winner, Coolmore’s partners also own Tennessee Stud, who finished fast from off the pace for the Joseph O’Brien stable. This son of Wootton Bassett was bred by Joseph’s mother Anne-Marie. Wootton Bassett has been the runaway star of the Coolmore firmament of late and his fee for this year was raised to an almost unthinkable €300k.

But even at that lofty price, in this Derby line-up he wasn’t the most expensive of the 14 sires (New Bay, Ghaiyyath, Sea The Stars and Frankel were doubly represented). Juddmonte’s Frankel’s fee is £350k. Dubawi, with one runner yesterday, has the same fee for his services at Darley Stud.

Every November the stud fees for Coolmore’s stallions are made public. I was shocked in 2023 that Australia, the 2014 Derby and Irish Derby winner and a son of another outstanding Epsom hero in the peerless Galileo, had his fee for 2024 reduced to €17,500. If potential clients needed any further encouragement, his dam is the Oaks winner Ouija Board.

I mentioned it to one of Coolmore’s stallion sales team at the time, who said it reflected his lack of popularity, probably because his progeny often needed time. He added that the only people that seemed to have confidence in him still were Aidan and Anne-Marie who sent a good number of mares to him.

Checking on my facts, I was further stunned that the 2025 fee was down to ten grand (Euro, about £8,400). Aidan and Anne-Marie sure know their stuff. It’s not too late for Australia to start going back towards the €50k at which he began his stallion career. Note, for example, that he is still at Coolmore while others have been sent elsewhere due to the hard-nosed realism that characterises the stud’s management. Of the 20 published stallion figures for flat race rather than jumps sires, only one was listed at a lower figure.

Watching from home due to entirely foreseen but inescapable circumstances, I was momentarily fooled into thinking that Lester Piggott had come back to ride in the Derby in the second running after his death. As the horses walked around, I noticed just how similar Rossa Ryan carries himself on a horse. When you get the chance, have a look. No doubt he’ll win the race one day, but the Dante Stakes winner Pride Of Arras never looked in with a chance.

One fact that certainly didn’t fool me was the dispiriting sight of the sparsely populated Hill. Every first Saturday in May, in Louisville, Kentucky, upwards of 100,000 squeeze in, a tradition in US racing that goes back to the days of the famed War Admiral/Seabiscuit match race at Pimlico in November 1938, where upstart Seabiscuit met his regally bred Kentucky Derby-winning rival and humbled him.

When I used to go to Epsom with my dad in the 1960s, there were more people there during the three-day (now one) Spring meeting in April than deigned to turn up on Saturday.

All the years I used to go there when with the Daily Telegraph, I arrived for breakfast in the old lads’ canteen, waiting for a glimpse of a few of the contenders having a leg shake in the morning, and the crowd was already building up. Many scores of buses lined the straight and the Hill was packed. On Saturday there was a sprinkling of people and even Ollie Bell and former England hockey goalie Sam Quek couldn’t disguise the fact that there was enough room for kids to play impromptu football matches.

Apparently, the Jockey Club, who run Epsom, is considering how to deal with the problem. The remedy is simple. Charge a tenner for cars and allow free admission. Then people will begin to flock back, find it an enjoyable experience and one that will develop as the years go on. I’ve never been so embarrassed. Derby Day once was a great British tradition. For most of our much-changed society, it’s an irrelevance. Thank goodness ITV think it’s worth making the effort.

Many say switching from Wednesday was a big mistake but, since Covid, it seems so few people these days have physically to GO to work, that simplification is a red herring.

It’s not as if there’s loads of competition from other sports at this time of year. On Saturday, England played a World Cup qualifying match against Andorra. Who? Our brave boys, rated number four in the world, hammered the opposition (rated 173 – I didn’t know there were that many countries) by a single goal to nil. Some of them are on £300k a week. Worth every penny I’d say.

- TS