Unbeaten Frankel

After Brad Wiggins’s Tour de France victory, Mo Farah’s Olympics successes and Andy Murray’s first Grand Slam title, any other result would have been unthinkable, so praise the Lord that Frankel did win Ascot’s Champion Stakes. On unsuitably soft ground and after gifting the others lengths at the start, the unbeaten star of world racing proved that he could fight as well as run. Now it is off to a pampered life in the breeding sheds with the hope of lots of little Frankels to come.

I have never seen a crowd like it at Ascot. The roads were choked three hours before. The velvet collars and City suits were there, so were the trilby-and-cords set. But so were the likely lads with gelled hair and ties at half-mast, the giggling girls in chiffons and high heels, the tatty anoraks and the chancers in pointed sharkskin shoes, all gathered to pay homage.