THE success that Ascot’s Shergar Cup (I know we’re going back a bit now) has become, from humble and unpromising beginnings, is relatively surprising. It is an unusual event for sure, and it’s not for everyone. Six handicaps for largely solid, unspectacular handicappers, racing in unfamiliar colours, many with unfamiliar riders, is not going to do it for lots of racing fans.

But any racing event which generates the coverage that Shergar Cup day generates, and which gets 30,000 people in through the gates – many of them non ‘regulars’ – on a feel-good day that means that some of them might come back, cannot be a bad thing for racing.