Near miss on Town Moor in bid to join racing's most elite band

On the big day itself a huge crowd poured into the town. As racegoers progressed along the town's historic section of the old Great North Road, the words of Fairfax-Blakeborough were evoked when, more than a century before, he had written of the "impressiveness, expanse, crowds, tenseness and wonders" of Doncaster. For those not old enough to have witnessed the exploits of Nijinsky, more than anything the occasion served as an example of what racing must have been like all those years ago when the likes of West Australian, Gladiateur, Ormonde, Isinglass and Bahram came to Town Moor to claim their laurels. With his usual eloquence, Alastair Down pointed out that it was indeed a moment to savour:

"Not least because few expected we would ever see the day dawn again when racing would be agog at the prospect of another great colt sealing his place among the turf's immortals by landing the Triple Crown."

There had been warnings by the racecourse management in the months before, urging people to purchase tickets early to avoid disappointment and, sure enough, in the sweltering heat of that September afternoon, there was not a spare seat to be found in the Grandstand. Many were there with the expectation of seeing Camelot 'cruise it' and, like other Triple Crown contenders in the past, he started at odds-on.