Women are ready but punters caught napping on D Day

The original French Revolution was, as every schoolchild knows, sparked by the storming of the Bastille prison.

In his celebrated work Civilisation: A Personal View, historian Kenneth Clark described the seven men freed on July 14, 1789 as four forgers, two lunatics and a deviant.

As the horses file in for the opening race at Deauville on day one of this new era for French racing – one in which female riders receive a 2kg (4.4lb) allowance – any would-be revolutionary would struggle to find seven members of the paying public, although a midweek meeting in the rain is as good a place as any to track down any of the above miscreants.