EPSOM has proved a very happy hunting ground for Irish-trained horses in the month of June since the turn of the present century with 10 colts from this country showing the way home in the Derby. Seven of those triumphs have been achieved in the last 10 years.

But it was so different in the first half of the 1900s and when Hard Ridden took the honours in the 1958 Derby at Epsom, the Mickey Rogers-handled colt became only the second winner of Britain’s most prestigious flat race from Ireland and the first for 51 years.