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One of the major benefits of announcing a “five-year plan” is that it should buy you some time but Epsom’s ambitious scheme to revive the status and popularity of the Derby, which was unveiled in December, may be an exception. There were just 22,312 paying spectators at last year’s race, and the need for an upturn in attendance for the 247th running of the Classic on Saturday is immediate.
In part, this is because the Derby still retains a special place in the hearts and memories of many of the sport’s most committed fans, and its steady decline over the last couple of decades has been painfully obvious to all of us who still cherish the annual pilgrimage to Epsom in the first week of June. There is a collective need for signs of a revival.
Though there were extenuating circumstances 12 months ago, including a yellow weather warning overnight which effectively wiped out the “walk-up” attendance, it felt like the day when the Derby hit rock-bottom. The ambitious plan to return to a six-figure aggregate over the two days of Epsom’s Classic meeting, more than double the aggregate of 37,500 in 2025, offers the hope, at least, of better times ahead.
The key features in the scheme drawn up by Jim Allen, the track’s general manager, include a boost in the Derby’s prize fund to £2m – with a £1m first prize – and free admission for under-18s to the main enclosure. The £30 charge for cars entering the Hill enclosure has also been dropped, while a bank of temporary “bleacher” seats along the inside rail will give racegoers a “bird’s eye” view of the closing stages.
Six months on from the announcement, the “year one” test is upon us, fans and professionals alike are desperate for some positivity and the early omens have been promising.
The news that the king and queen will be at Epsom on Saturday was a significant boost, while the fact that the royal couple will make a sharp exit from a family wedding 90 miles away to get to the track recalls fond memories of the previous queen’s warp-speed delivery of her speech at the state opening of parliament in June 2017, which Theresa May thoughtlessly scheduled for day two of the Royal meeting at Ascot. The weather forecast, meanwhile, while somewhat mixed, is also a good deal more favourable this year.
Less auspiciously, though, even a £2m prize fund has failed to attract the best three-year-old colt in Europe. Aidan O’Brien’s Constitution River, a brilliant winner of the Dee Stakes at Chester last month, lined up instead for the 10-furlong Prix du Jockey Club, the French Derby, at Chantilly on Sunday, and overcame a horrible draw to establish himself as the clear leader of the Classic generation. Derby purists will feel, with some justification, that Constitution River’s sole run in a Classic should have been at Epsom and not Chantilly.
O’Brien, though, has saddled a record 11 Derby winners and the Coolmore Stud’s uber-stallion, Galileo, forged his reputation on the Surrey downs in 2001, so neither the trainer nor the “lads” in the Coolmore syndicate could ever be accused of failing to accord the Derby due respect and support over the years. Even in Constitution River’s absence, O’Brien still has seven possible runners among the 17 names that remain in contention after Monday’s five-day declarations, including Benvenuto Cellini, the 7-4 favourite, and Pierre Bonnard, the 8-1 third choice.
The extent to which this matters for the less committed racegoers that Epsom is trying to win back is also open to debate. The bumper crowds that were still turning up as recently as the early years of this century were, for the most part, drawn by the Derby’s history and reputation – brand-recognition, in effect – and the promise of a great day out, rather than an urgent desire to see a specific horse. The Derby retains many of its unique and historic attributes, including a setting that adds immensely to the spectacle if – and only if – there are enough people there, generating the buzz in the stands and on the infield that was so palpably missing last year.
The fact that the Derby is staged on common land, with free admission to the Hill enclosure guaranteed as a result, is another key asset, and one that Allen and his management team are rightly seeking to exploit by scrapping the charge for cars in the Hill enclosure.
In the modern, highly commercial sporting environment, the idea of actively encouraging free admission for spectators might give many commercial directors a conniption. To build attendance in the main enclosures, though, the Derby first needs to rediscover its sense of grand theatre and occasion, and nothing says that quite like a sea of faces on the infield as the field gallops down the home straight.
The boost to the Derby’s prize fund was an obvious headline when Allen’s five-year plan was unveiled in December, but if, as we all earnestly hope, the Epsom crowd is up on Saturday, the decision to drop the parking charge and effectively promote the Hill as a free day out to all comers may prove to have been the shrewdest move of all.
