SO, what is the biggest potential story in the 244th Derby?

If you think the race is hard to work out, juggle around these options in your head. Before you even get to the horses, sadly there is the threat of the Animal Rising protesters, that inevitably will garner headlines, just hopefully not reflecting what is their desired outcome.

On the track, you have Frankie trying to win his third Derby on his 28th and final try. Auguste Rodin is bidding to give Aidan O’Brien a record-extending ninth Derby and to bounce back in sensational style from his Guineas flop. Military Order represents Coolmore’s great rivals in Godolphin and is bidding to become the first horse in 123 years to become a full-brother winner, following on from Adayar.

Passenger bids to give Sir Michael Stoute back-to-back wins in the race and his seventh overall. White Birch represent the small guys and could make John Murphy a Cheltenham Festival and Derby-winning trainer while also give Colin Keane a debut win in the race.

The Foxes could give Oisin Murphy, with all the trials and tribulations he has faced, a career-defining win. Dubai Mile could remarkably give Charlie Johnston a Derby winner in his first year training, having taken over from his father Mark who never had one.

But above all else, the story of this race is surely Jessica Harrington and Sprewell. Given her astonishing achievements already as a trainer, it would be a major story in itself, but Harrington has had the hardest year of her life so far, tackling breast cancer.

No one will be surprised that she has done so with her usual unblinding positivity and remarkably, despite bouts and bouts of chemotherapy, she has had one of her faster ever starts to the season.

In late April she had the media visit her Commonstown base. It was a magical morning, the highlight undoubtedly sitting around a patio table just outside her house and able to ask her anything.

Harrington talked about her illness, her daughters, flat racing, jump racing, the rules of racing, competition in racing, opposition to racing, what we can be doing to make racing better, her greatest wins, her horses and her hopes for the season ahead.

One of the little gems of that chat was her assertion that if there was one race she’d love to win, it had to be the Derby. Maybe it didn’t garner the attention it deserved around the table given she had no obvious contender, but she certainly does now.

Sprewell had only won an ordinary conditions race over a mile at Naas at that stage but he announced himself to the racing world with a thoroughly likeable performance in the Derby Trial Stakes at Leopardstown. Could the dream become a reality? Every chance. Harrington thinks the ground will be fine for the son of Churchill, that he has a brilliant temperament, that he will handle the undulations of Epsom and that he has the class.

If the son of Churchill passes the famous post in front under Shane Foley, Harrington will have a Derby to go along with a Champion Chase, a Gold Cup and a Champion Hurdle. She will be a classic winning trainer in two different countries. She will be the first female trainer to win the Derby. Breaking new ground, that is her thing.

Above all else, she’ll have done it having taken on cancer at the age of 76. It would be one of the great Derby wins.

Quinn has Wagyu primed

TIPPERARY native, Yorkshire-based John Quinn is no stranger to success on Derby day through the likes of dual Diomed Stakes winner Blythe Knight and Carribean Coral, who won him the Dash in 2003. He has two chances of further success on one of the biggest days on the racing calendar through Jm Jungle in the Aston Martin 3yo “Dash” (2.45) and Mr Wagyu in the JRA Tokyo Trophy Handicap (5.05).

“The thing with Mr Wagyu is that he has won 15 times in his career but never before June,” Quinn told The Irish Field. “He won this race last year and he likes Epsom. He has been running better and better and we were happy with his latest start in a good race at Cork.”

To expand on Quinn’s stat for the eight-year-old, he is 0-15 in the months of the year preceding June and 7-15 in the sole month of June.

Jm Jungle is at the other end of the spectrum in terms of his career, a three-year-old sprinter with just 12 starts and he put up a very good run when just touched off by Kuwait City in a five-furlong handicap at York’s Dante Meeting.

“That was a really good run,” Quinn said. “He went up 4lb for finishing second in that race which isn’t ideal but he is in good nick and he seems in really good form.

“We think he will handle the track as he seems to like straight tracks and he will love that ground, he is good actioned horse. We’re hopeful of a big run.”