James Fanshawe: 'It's easy to go in your shell and grumble that things aren't fair - but you have to remember how well you've done'

The couple of weeks before the Derby are a time of flux. If you hear a noise that you think is the sonic embodiment of consternation, it may well be multiple trainers trying to convince themselves that what they have in their yard is a horse with the requisite speed and stamina to propel it, and the yard, into the annals of Epsom glory.

As many have found, though, it's not an exact science, and as James Fanshawe ponders the matter from a comfy armchair at Pegasus House, he seems to be going round in ever-decreasing circles, on a mission to give substance to his Classic dreams.

"You could argue he's by a miler in Gleneagles, but Gleneagles was by Galileo and his dam's a sister to Giant's Causeway, so you've got speed and stamina in there, and then you've got the Galileo-Fastnet Rock cross, which is golden apparently, and then you go back to Wannabe Grand . . ."