How the greatest meeting of all coped with everything Covid-19 could throw at it

There was never any danger that Royal Ascot 2020 was going to be anything like any other Ascot that had gone before. It was always going to be a first, every bit as much as the very first meeting at the course in 1711, courtesy of Queen Anne, or the first officially royal week 200 years later.

Since the late 18th century there have been hopelessly impractical top hats; since the early 19th, courtesy of Beau Brummell, there have been men sweltering in tailcoats in roasting summer temperatures; but in spite of, or perhaps because of, these sartorial encumbrances, the nation took the occasion to its heart.

In 1910, the death of King Edward VII dictated that the crowds dressed uniformly and unprecedentedly in black; two World Wars threatened to put a crimp in proceedings, but only in 1940 did they manage to force a first cancellation of the modern era; so many firsts but nothing quite like this year.