How the pretender beat the Prince and Dettori kept his trousers on

At around 2.38 on that fateful afternoon, Frankie passed the post on Diffident, having landed the Diadem Stakes for Saeed Bin Suroor in the royal blue silks of his main employer..

It was a joyous occasion, but hardly a momentous one. Godolphin was in its pomp at the time, after all, and a Group 2 win was nothing to make a song and dance about. A flying dismount, maybe, to celebrate a double for all concerned, but there were bigger fish to fry later in the day and no sense that what had just happened would come to form part of the fabric of Turf history.

Looking back, however, Diffident’s success - although overshadowed by Mark Of Esteem’s Group 1 and Fujiyama Crest’s thrilling climax - was perhaps the pivotal scene in the entire drama. It was where it could all have gone wrong; where the denouement might have been nipped in the bud; where the bookies had their chance to wriggle off the hook.