The day Sir Ivor and Sir Matt ruled supreme over the world of sport

This sporting life has given us all great and unforgettable days of glory, but rarely has it been so generous with its gifts as it was on May 29, 1968. At Epsom, at Wembley, household names from two sports who are still household names today lit up the back pages and the front pages with achievements that remain undimmed despite the intervening five decades.

Lester Piggott, George Best, Vincent O'Brien, Bobby Charlton, Sir Ivor, Sir Matt Busby; within the space of a few sunny hours on an otherwise workaday Wednesday they conquered the sporting world. At the same time Paris was in turmoil, its boulevards crowded with revolutionaries infused with the intoxicating spirit of '68, but on May 29 the only place to be was London.

In an eerie augury of this year's Derby, the race revolved around a horse trained at Ballydoyle who was odds-on for Epsom after winning the 2,000 Guineas. Sir Ivor had been primed for the Classics in unconventional style – O'Brien had sent him to winter in the milder surroundings of Pisa where all did not go particularly smoothly, the colt suffering from an abscess in his foot and then, when sound again, getting loose and almost tumbling into a dyke – but it did not stop him winning in effortless style at Newmarket, beating champion two-year-old Petingo by a length and a half.