A battle for the ages as Native River and Might Bite go toe to toe

People love to say that things aren’t as good as the old days – they are wrong. The duel between Native River and Might Bite was better than Kauto Star versus Denman, Grundy versus Bustino or Arkle versus Mill House.

Go back to October 13, 1954 and it even beats the greatest head-to-head I have ever seen, the night Chris Chataway broke the 5,000m world record and a Russian called Vladimir Kuts in front of a sold out White City and 12 million viewers on TV. It was so big that six weeks later Chataway became the first BBC Sports Personality of the Year, despite having been only a pacemaker when his friend Roger Bannister had run the first sub four-minute mile five months earlier.

For me that distant night is no small comparison, for what gripped my 11-year-old self then was the same clarity of drama that was at Cheltenham on Friday.