Reliable banker Wall Street kick-started a day like no other

With a raft of Group races topped off with a Group 1 clash between top-class pair Mark Of Esteem and Bosra Sham, both of them Guineas winners, plus a couple of competitive handicaps, presumably everybody who tuned up for the Ascot Festival on September 28, 1996, suspected they were in for a bit of a treat.

Unless they were blessed with the gift of second sight, however, what they cannot possibly have expected was to witness an epochal day's racing unlike any other before or since as Frankie Dettori secured his place in the annals with his unprecedented seven-timer.

And neither, for that matter, did Dettori himself. Truth be told, the-then 25-year-old rider was feeling less than exuberant as he travelled to Ascot for a full book of rides that fateful Saturday, the day when his world was to be turned upside down. “I wasn't in the best of moods as I arrived,” he admits. “A long afternoon's toil at Haydock 24 hours earlier had drawn a blank. Six rides and nothing to show for it except a lousy journey on the way home on a Friday night.”