Royal Ascot is not the same without Henry Cecil

For a moment it seemed incongruous reading obituaries in the same week of Sir Henry Cecil and of Esther Williams, the Hollywood star whom most of us only ever remember seeing in a swimsuit amid whirling patterns of leggy lovelies in water ballets. Then I recalled her comment that the only thing Hollywood’s moguls ever changed in her series of films were her leading men and the water in the pool and I realised there was something of a parallel. Esther Williams did her thing so exquisitely that all people ever wanted to see was a repeat. Those whom she did it with became irrelevant, and there was something of that about the master trainer too.

He did his thing superbly and he did it in a highly personal style that nobody else will ever be able to match. His instinct for training racehorses, particularly fillies, was sublime — and instinct is what it was down to.